


The Unfortunate Delusions of Sebastian Moran.

by Garmonbozia



Series: The Delusions [1]
Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: (if you squint), Domestic Moran, Gen, Post-Vow, Pressure, Psychopath, Psychosis, Retirement, Reunion, Revenge, Stalking, best of friends, did you miss me?, friends - Freeform, mormor
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-01-21
Updated: 2014-02-05
Packaged: 2018-01-09 14:02:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 15
Words: 30,358
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1146840
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Garmonbozia/pseuds/Garmonbozia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Finally back in London, after all this time, Jim's first port of call is to find his old gunner. What a surprise, then, to find a happily domesticated security guard who's fired nothing more serious than a paintball gun these last couple of years. He's 'out of the game'. Or so he says, anyway.  So Moran thinks. [Needless to say, major Vow spoilers.  Crosspost from FF.net.  This fic has been rated for language, and for later scenes.]</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts).



I am both _on_ and _in_ Leicester Square.

Let's start with 'on'. I expect that's the one that's perplexed you. Well, we couldn't have you perplexed, so let's start with 'on'. It is not a misprint. You did not mishear. I am _on_ Leicester Square. I'm on the walls. Glowing in a billion little LED points. Up close I'd be a mess of red and blue and green. But from down here, looking up at the screens that are usually flashing advertising and musicals and movie posters, I look pretty fucking glorious. I'm a mile tall, repeating like insanity, I'm fucking terrifying.

And yes, in order to know all of this, I am also _in_ Leicester Square. Don't worry, though, nobody's going to recognize me. They're not even going to _see_ me. Everybody here is standing the same way; turned toward a screen, head tipped back, staring at me, so they can't see me. Get it?

You might say I've watched long enough. You might consider this to be tempting fate. Fine. Have it your way, my dear and constant reader. I pull down the brim of my hat and turn away. You know best. I'm not safe here. I should get out of here. You're right, you're absolutely right. Out, away from here.

Down on Whitcomb Street, you hear my voice drifting out the windows. On every screen, on every radio. And I get that _fucking glorious_ moment you only see in movies where I pass a Curry's and I'm on every TV in the window.

You know, if I were a weaker man, this might be a real ego trip. But I'm not. Weak, I mean. Or stupid. The ego trip is yet to come.

So I'm at the lights on Coventry Street. They change. And there's a bus coming, but slow, and the light's red, so I cross. Just crossing the white line in the same lane, that bus isn't stopping, and I jump back. Other cars blast their horns and the driver finally realizes what he's doing. And I swear, the metal is against me when I breathe out, that's how close we got.

And why?

Because he didn't see me. He's craning looking up into Leicester Square. At me.

I slide around the bus, amongst the almost apologetic traffic. A laugh starts, somewhere just below my ribs. Not wanting to look like a lunatic I try and quash it, but it doesn't want to be quashed. It's stronger than I am, and has to be buried against my fist to even keep it quiet.

Hm? What's that? 'Just nerves', is it? Yes, I suppose that makes sense. Having nearly just been run over, this is just nerves. More than likely. You're a sharp sod, you, aren't you?

Piss off. You think it scares me? You think the nearness of death, the idea of my own mortality, has _any_ power over me _whatsoever_ anymore? Piss off.

Been there. Done that. Ruined that perfectly good coat.

No, this isn't nerves, although it's smart of you to say that. That's a psychological assessment, as much as it's an observation. But that's the trouble, you see; you look too closely. You see the red-green-and-blue little lights and miss the bigger picture. Namely, that this is _hilarious_. This is the best joke I've heard in years. Do you know how long I've been playing this? How much planning and effort and how much sheer fucking graft has gone into this?

How _unbearably_ funny would it be if I walked under a bus _now_?

Oh, it's set me off again just thinking about it. Forgive me. I know I look like a fool, out in the street, hiding my face and laughing like a clown. Forgive me.

Me, under a bus. Me smeared across the road, turning the white lines red, with my brains out for good and all this time, broke in a dozen places, laid out all at weird angles, while my own voice still echoes all over the city. My face burned onto the memories of those who scrape me up, and maybe they don't even make the connection between that and the face they've been seeing everywhere. They take the ID in my pocket at face value. I get buried (again) under a(nother) false name, vanishing.

Oh, what would become of poor Sherlock then? Can't you just picture it? Wasting away, waiting for me, lost and dying. Imagine him expecting me, every minute of every day. Crumbling away to little pieces. Oh, he'd just go _mad_! White coats and rubber rooms, strapped in and chained up and boxed up and all shackled, oh _God_. Imagine John Watson _crying_ over it behind locked doors in the middle of the night. And aw, fuck me, Mycroft, fucking Mycroft, Jesus Christ…

It's almost worth considering.

Almost. If it didn't require staying away, returning to quiet non-existence, I'd do it in a heartbeat. I don't know if I'm capable of that sort of fortitude. Or if _anybody_ is. Last time, I had to be dead before he'd kill himself. Therefore, last time I didn't get to watch. To do that twice? To always have made my exit before the curtain goes down? I will not be the last corpse on stage again. Hamlet was the only one ever got a good deal out of that.

And I'm really not sure it's fair to traumatise some poor bus driver in the name of Sherlock bloody Holmes.

In other words, I need to get off these streets before I'm killed or sectioned. It's alright. I know where I'm going. Not as if I've just been aimlessly wandering. Don't love the sound of my own voice _that_ much.

There's a place. In the interests of giving the gents at Vauxhall Cross a bit of a chase, I won't say exactly where, or what it's called. It's a beautiful little basement bar, run by a gullible and put-upon gent named Eddie. We used to drink here. Back when there was a thing you might call 'we', that is. And we never did any business here, so that it would be safe, so that we'd always have somewhere to come to.

Not to mention there are a bunch of scam artists already working out of one of the booths. Wouldn't do to tread on anybody's toes.

Anyway, that's where I find myself. It's the middle of the afternoon, so things are pretty quiet. Eddie himself is behind the bar, where he usually is. I turn up my collar, just in case.

But Eddie is another one of those people who isn't going to see me, because he's already looking too hard. He's up close to the radio, listening to the loop of my message with a face of absolute concentration.

Out from behind the jukebox, at a little table all by himself, a man lifts up his big Scouse voice and sighs, "Will you turn that _shite_ off, please?"

"But it really sounds like that fella," says Eddie, the gormless twat. "What's his name, the one used to come in here with you, turned out to be a right wrong'un-"

"Eddie, stop speaking ill of the dead and shut the fucking radio off."

"Hold on, I just want to have a listen again."

The man in the corner gives up the fight. Sighs and shakes his head and starts to finish his drink so he can leave, but he's not arguing anymore. It's odd; he was never a quitter when I knew him. When I knew him, he would've got up, took the radio out from underneath and smashed it to bits. The static would have squealed and half-deafened everyone in a hundred yard radius, but he wouldn't have thought that far ahead. His rage would have protected him from all harm, too.

I cross to him. I have to time this properly or Eddie's going to notice something. So I measure my steps. I'm just reaching him. I open my mouth and wait an extra beat to say in sync with myself, "Did you miss me?"

Moran winces. First, he thinks it's just the radio again. Then he realizes. That was closer, it was real. It was right here with him. He turns his head very, very slowly. Round about the time I get a look at his eyes I realize, I might have made a _tiny_ bit of a mistake sneaking up on him. The hand around the pint glass starts to shake. Starts to tighten, like it might go _through_ the pint glass, filling itself with lethal shards before it swings up to punch me. _Repeatedly_.

"Now, Moran, take that look off your face-"

"You prick…"

"-You had to be expecting this, after thon other one showing up-"

"You fucking shameless wanking Irish prick, I'm going to kill you."

"Keep your voice down, would you? There's a barman over there."

The eyes narrow. I'd forgotten just precisely how tall he was until he rises up from his chair. Forgotten how well built he is, how much gym time he clocks, all those weights and reps and other terms I only ever heard from him.

But I _think_ I would remember the black, epauletted jumper, the uniform insignia, the printed I.D. badge clipped to his belt.

Remember that laugh? The one I couldn't do anything about? "Christ alive, you're a security man now!" It's got the better of me. I'm done for, gone. I can't even argue when he grabs me by the shoulder and pushes me with him, out of the place. Passing the bar, he blocks me from Eddie's view. Probably a good thing, actually; Eddie's starting to catch on. I can feel his eyes follow us out, idiot jaw hanging open around the question that'll never, ever come. Bless him. If it weren't for eejits like Eddie, there'd be nowhere for people like me.

I am unceremoniously shoved into the cobbled side-street above, still crippled with laughter. "At least tell me it's Harrods. Or Liberty. You're not, like, the Primark store detective or something, are you?"

This is a bit grim. He's been angry with me before. I remember him angry. I remember him _properly_ raging, but that was before we got know each other, doesn't really count. I've never seen him like this. Moran's shocked and upset. Doesn't know where to put himself. Stupid of him, if you ask me. The second Holmes appeared back on the scene, he should've started a countdown. T minus three months, give or take. Long before that, there should've been signs. Jesus, he should've known I wouldn't _die_ that easily, surely.

So _why_ , then, does he still look like he wants to use my skull to beat an unsuccessful hole in the brickwork?

"Sebastian, speak to me. Stop just glaring and let the words come out of your mouth." He doesn't. He turns around, actually, and starts to walk. Like he's leaving me here. "Where are you going?" No answer. "Moran, the fuck are you doing?"

"Not killing you. And if you're happy enough with that, don't come near me again."

"What're you talking about?" He turns back, charges a step or two towards me. Maybe just to see if I flinch. "Stop being a drama queen," I tell him. "And c'mon. We've got work to do."

"Yeah. And I've got about five minutes left on my break." Still on about this day job he's got himself… He better not be thinking this is funny, y'know. This is not the big joke of the day. But maybe I shouldn't roll my eyes, because he goes _on_ to say (and this is very definitely not funny at all, in any way), "You're too late, mate. I'm done with all that. I got out."

…No, sorry, not registering. Doesn't compute. "I beg your pardon?"

Without a stammer, without remorse, "I got out."


	2. Chapter 2

_Out_ , he said. _Out_ , Jesus, what a word, _out_.

When it first left his lips I was about to tell him he'd been _out_ for years except he hadn't told his da. I was _about_ to tell him that 'out' had never been a fecking issue. He'd been 'out', in that respect, from the first time he ever told me he was ill so he could piss off playing at Couples rather than discuss a job he was going on. And there _was_ a first time, and a last time, and a lot of times in between. Friday nights, usually.

Now, just take a moment, if you will, and consider my boundless mercy and benevolence in this. Because if you had a boss, and you called him every Monday morning (for the sake of argument) complaining of the same Lost Weekend symptoms, how long would you have a job for? But no, not me. I _indulged_ him. Let the boy have his fun. I've got nothing against it. Anyway, he always did well at his work.

Nothing ever got in the way of the work.

He never gave me any _reason_ to get pissed off with him. Do you understand what I'm saying? Not until this, anyway.

_Out_ , my flaming Christ. Out and he meant out of the life. Out of the game. Off the board, retired, gave it up, packed it in, said goodbye to all of that, put away childish things, shuffled off to join the choir celestial and pining for the fucking fjords… No, wait, that's a different thing. That's about being dead.

Yeah, I was right the first time, it's the same thing.

_Out_ , though. Out. Jesus.

I let him walk away from me, after that. Couldn't really afford to be causing a scene. It's been a few hours now. The internet is still picking me out of its teeth, but the TVs are mostly clear again. Radio gives little barks of me out of the corners, scrolling between stations. Hidden in the white noise. That's all there is. I'll be gone by morning, though the message will remain.

What I mean, a couple of hours have gone by. And I'll tell you what I've found out. My dearest Moran has not fallen to the lowly post of store detective just yet. He's holding a dull, quiet desk at an office block right in the heart of St James'. Which is not awful; I should find out what sort of companies hold a spot there, get that access while the getting's good. But still… My Seb… I never put him to any undercover work, any long, wheedling insinuations, because I never thought he could sit at peace for this long.

I've been watching this CCTV feed since I got back to the flat and the most he's done is get up to change the newspaper he _was_ reading for another from the reception coffee table. Telegraph, by the look of it. Seb doesn't read the Telegraph. Seb reads the _Sun_ , and that's on a well-informed day. That's only when he's feeling _smart_ , he ever reaches for the paper.

_Oh_ , you say, _oh, Jim, things have changed. You've been gone too long, things change_.

Yes. Yes they do. Good for you. Clever you that noticed it. Things do change. But _people_ , since when do people change? I never knew a person that changed. Evolved, yes, matured, developed, but not _changed_.

Nah. Nah, there's no way. 'Out' he says, and maybe even believes it, but he's not out. Things change, but hearts don't. He's still my Moran. He's just forgotten, because I haven't been around to remind him. Like a hermit in isolation forgetting his own name because no one calls him by it. He hasn't changed, not deep down. He's my Moran, as I remember. He'll come to his senses, wait and see.

He might need a bit of help, but he'll come to his senses.

As I watch, he gets up and wanders out of frame. Probably to fetch himself a coffee, answer a call. One of those bland, boring things the man in reception does. Don't know, never paid that much attention to the man in reception. Usually breezing past him while he shouts that I can't just breeze past him.

In his sudden absence, I pick up the phone.

This is a call I've wanted to make since I found myself abandoned at the top of Eddie's narrow stairs. Since things stopped going the way I expected. I just had a feeling that, if I made it then I might say a few harsh things, and say them too harshly to get the real point across. I've calmed down a bit now. Can handle it now, thanks.

"Hello?" Ah, the voice of the London office. Home base. The sound of it is round and muffled, a little wet; eating a lolly. This is the voice of the little lunatic I left keeping an eye on things, a scarred delightful little basket-case with no official name and a smile that covers her utter lack of moral compunction. I gave her that. The lack of moral compunction, not the smile. So when I left and locked the gates behind me, what better angel to leave behind?

…Oh, piss off. Take that look off your face. Like it's _any_ worse than giving out cash and phones to homeless nobodies.

"Hello, Moneypenny."

She still giggles when I call her that. Then she keeps giggling. Little scraps of sentences start to peek through, "You were on the telly. And the computer. You were on BBC3 and BBC3 doesn't even come on until seven o'clock."

"Didn't I tell you? Are you saying you didn't believe me?"

"No, no, of course I did. But it was still really cool."

"Glad you enjoyed it."

"Now everybody knows I was right about you!" Yeah, that was the other thing about leaving someone so obviously unhinged to watch over my affairs; she wandered all round the town telling people I wasn't dead. She was removed from the funeral of Richard Brooke for laughing out loud. But nobody ever _believed_ her. Sweet, obsessed, mental little thing, poor girl. Ought to be sectioned, for her own good.

"So they do," I tell her, quiet and patient as a Hindu idol, "You should be careful. All it takes is some copper or some spook to remember you giggling at the graveside, they'll be all over you." I listen to the air rush past her phone as she runs to the window, looking for the squad cars or the tinted windows. "Yeah, probably not this quickly."

"So can I come and see you yet? Is it safe yet?"

We'll see about that. How safe it is for her to come here depends entirely on how she performs during the rest of this conversation. "First things first-" I try to say, but she's excited, and still talking. In fact, she starts the conversation for me.

"Did you see Colonel Moran yet?"

"Yeah. Yeah. Saw him. And he said the funniest thing to me, angel, you'll never guess. Or will you? Let's see if you can guess. What was it he said to me?"

"Oh." She's in trouble. She knows it. There are rustling noises that may well be her adopting the foetal position. "Did he maybe tell you that he's not doing any more murders anymore?"

"…Something like that. So you knew that. Which leads me neatly to my next question. Did you not, even for a second, maybe think that this was quite an important piece of information for me to have?"

My sweetest angel (or she used to be, anyway) stumbles and stammers and lies. As best I can pare it down, she _was_ aware of Moran's newfound respect for human life. She could not, however, figure out how to break the news to me. That's probably the honest version. There's another story, which she's pushing _very_ hard, where she was only _respecting_ his decision, allowing him to tell me himself and in his own way. She shouldn't be pushing that so hard; it's only making me want to ask her what the _hell_ the point of having a spy is if she doesn't actually tell you what she discovers.

" _You_ ," I tell her instead, "were supposed to help facilitate my smooth, unhindered return and-"

"And you're really, really angry with me. I know. And you're not here to see me, but I'm proper, appropriately terrified. But it's not my fault he hasn't fired anything since you left except a paintball gun on his bloody stag weekend and-" Stop. I didn't say that out loud, and I don't think she does. Somewhere very far away she's still talking. His _stag weekend_. Not just _a_ stag weekend, that he could have been invited to, but _his_ stag weekend. That's what she said, isn't it? I ask her again. Just to confirm. "Oh," she says again. Apparently that's just how she acknowledges she's fucked up. "I said too much again, didn't I?"

"Now, at this stage, yes. Last week it seems you said far, far too little. Talk now. Prove your tongue is worth something and you won't have to ask Santa Claus for a new one."

"…Christmas was last week."

"And a year's a long time to stand silent. Better get to it."

"Well, it's legal now, isn't it?"

She tells me things. Lots of things, more things than I was really asking for or expecting. While she talks, I check them out. Looking at marriage records, employment details. It all gets very easy when this so-called _spouse_ of Moran's turns out to have a Facebook page. I hang up on the Angel and turn to this instead.

Sebastian Moran- _Kingsley_ these days, if you don't mind. The better half of _Tom_ Moran-Kingsley, an Emergency department nurse at University College Hospital.

Well, at least he found himself somebody with a nice, steady career.

Look at that. Look at that right there. That's that beneficence, that emotional largesse of mine, at work again. Who else, I ask you, could go away and be dead and come back to find best mate married off without so much as a by-your-leave and be thinking about the _fecking husband's prospects_?

Me thinking, Well, alright, Moran, you've had your two-weeks holiday for the honeymoon. Time to get back to work, surely? Honestly, usually an employer doesn't lose you for months at a time unless you decide to procrea-

And then I scroll down. Now, don't get me wrong; I know my first year biology. I know what goes in where and where certain things can come out. So I _know_ , I know in my heart, that the goofy little thing (who is far too old to be theirs anyway), who stands between my Seb and this _Tom_ person, couldn't possibly have come from them.

But it's about four and a half feet tall, mixed race, with a mop of hair hanging over one eye like his one father and a big dopey smile like the other.

Briefly, I call the Angel back. "The child, the little person, explain that, what is that?"

"That's Peter? He's Tom's, from before. Don't know where the mum is now, couldn't find that out. You know him, though; you read him a story once, when you were being Rich and the Colonel was babysitting. They were only dating then, him and-"

"Oh God, will you _shut up?!_ " I don't. I don't know these people. These normal people, this _nurse_ and his _son_ , I don't know anybody like that. I don't know anybody who's been dull enough to produce spawn without having some sort of agenda in mind for them. And unless that big toothy grin, that 'say cheese' rictus, is masking the green shoots of a trainee serial killer, that's not what's happened here. Jesus, _fuck_ , I've heard of playing happy families but _my good God_ , Sebastian, there is a _line_ to be drawn! "No, no, wait, don't shut up yet. Answer one more question."

Fast, because she knows she's annoyed me too many times already today, "Yes, sir. 'Course, sir."

"Does poor Tom know what pirouettes our dear Colonel used to do for his pennies?"

Her torn, wretched silence tells me everything I need to know.


	3. Chapter 3

In my infinite, unknowable mercy, I am allowing the Angel back into my presence. Which is more than Lucifer and Mephistopheles got for their trespasses, if you know your Marlowe. Which puts me one up on the Big Man Upstairs, so in the interests of keeping things nice and level, I'm making her pay for it. She can come, but she is to bring with her two particulars. Firstly, a bag of the nice salt-caramel chocolates from the posh place at Moorgate. That's the price of admission. The price of my not killing her the moment she steps through the door is more complex.

There are heavy, solid thumps at the door, rather than a knock. This, I find when I open it, is because her arms are full and she knocked with her head. And the noise was annoying, but the look on her face is full of joy and the intention to hug, so really I'm glad her arms are full.

"Stop grinning," I say, and she immediately does. "Get in, don't talk." Happily, she does that too. Hasn't forgotten who's in charge, unlike some we could mention.

The Angel stands in the corner of the living room. She thinks I'm going to ask her to sit down. _Expectant_. I fucking hate expectant people. If you are _expecting_ something from me, and you're wondering why you're not getting it, it's because you're _expecting_ it. Adler's job, for instance, that didn't need a six month gap in the middle, but she wouldn't bloody shut up asking me when. So no, the Angel can stand. And I know that box is heavy, but I'm not telling her to put it down, and God _help_ her if she tries to do so without permission.

You'll forgive me; it's just the mood that I'm in. A show of obedience and deference will do me a world of good. It's part of why I let her come.

That, and the mere _idea_ of going down to that storage locker myself could have raised up hives. Filthy, stinking place, and everything under inches of dust. My little visitor has made an effort to clean off the cardboard archive box in her arms, but at the edges, in the creases, greyness and grubbiness still clings. That dive is the sort of place where she belongs. Nobody would have noticed her popping in and out. I'm too famous these days anyway.

There's a number written neatly on the side in black marker. It's the same as the number hastily scrawled on her arm, scratched into the skin in places where the biro was failing her. Luckily, it's not one digit off the number I gave her, so she's got the right box. Otherwise she could have found herself packaged up in a suitcase and left back at that locker for a couple of days. Not long enough to starve or anything like that. Just to teach her a lesson. I'm instructive, yes, but I'm not _cruel_.

"It's funny," she giggles. I let her go on. Her desperate gambits have always amused me. Pretty versions of ugly things, like the rainbows on top of spilt motor oil. "But you wouldn't think it would be so heavy, given what it is?"

"Would you like to put it down?"

"Yes please."

"Tough. Stay where you are." The box takes a little of my weight as I pull of the lid and reach for what's inside. "One moth-hole in this, precious, and I swear to you-"

"It's manmade fibre, sir. Moths won't touch it." And neither will I; my hand jumps back from the plasticky mess.

It's been well packed. The headpiece is on top of the gaiters are on top of the jacket, and everything is neat, protected. And the box was nicely catalogued too. "Were you this careful with everything you put away for me, dear?"

"Yes."

"And the files are all-"

"Are all done up in plastic to keep them from warping."

"Good girl." I take the box off her, nod for her to sit down.

The angel plops herself at the end of the couch while I put her housewarming gift to one side. "It's really good to s-" she begins to say.

"Don't. I don't want to hear it. I want to hear about Moran. Properly this time. But since you had so much trouble deciding what you should and shouldn't tell, this time I'm going to be right here to talk you through it."

She leans forward over her knees, head in hands. Moans like it matters, "He doesn't _want_ me to tell you. He asked me _not_ to."

This is difficult for me. I hope you never come to this point your life. I hope nobody else ever has to deal with this. Because I have actually gotten to the stage where I'm _bored_ with putting people in their place. It has stopped making sense. In the angel's case, it stopped making sense _years_ ago, and yet here we are again. She knows she can't win, she knows she can't argue, she knows she's going to fall in line. And yet, here we go again. Forcing me to put her through this again.

I beckon her over to me. Sit her down on the edge of the coffee table, within easy reach. From my shirt pocket I produce a little something I dug up especially for the occasion. It's a safety pin. Pure and simple, bog standard, can't be arsed sewing something, safety pin.

She keens and cries, "Please!", and her hands ball up into these tiny little fists, bundling under her chin. I get one by the wrist and bring it down to me.

"Open your hand." With my thumb and forefinger crushing into the tendons, she doesn't have much choice anyway.

Her hands look older than when we did this last. She spreads her fingers and four fine bones show across the back of her knuckles, standing up like bridges. I open the pin.

This is the left hand. We'll go for the third finger, I think. That's where a wedding ring goes. Let her remember that it's an unreported wedding ring that got her into this. Let her remember who she belongs to. With the point just touching the place between fingernail and nail bed, I ask her, "Who do you work for, angel?"

"You." Yes. Correct. I push the pin just deep enough to draw blood.

"Who pays you, then?"

"You do."

Correct again. I push the pin deep enough that it stays in without my touching it. Her hand starts shaking when the point scratches inside the nail.

"Who left you one of his best bolt-holes for a flat in his will, and let you take it whether he was dead or not?"

"You did. Thank you." Oh, very good, I like the gratitude, and I put my thumb to the curved end and push hard. See, once we've started this, we don't stop until the pin is closed again. The kindest thing I can do is push hard. I'm trying to think of one more question when she earns her release. A drop of blood has broken from the bead beneath her nail, and is rolling down the pin. It drips off, and would stain the knee of my trousers if she didn't put out her good hand to catch it. Good girl. She remembers fast, this one. I change my grip, holding her elbow with her arm braced all along mine, and finish it.

Once the point of the pin emerges from the skin at the other end of the nail, "Did you bring the chocolates?"

"They're in my bag."

So I can hook the safety pin shut and we're finished. She grabs her hand back, folding it tight beneath the other. Her head is buried away toward her shoulder, eyes screwed tight shut. Not even crying. Trembling all over, but not crying.

"…Are you alright?"

She nods. Tells me, "I'm really sorry."

"I know you are, love."

"What do you want to know?"

"I want to know where they live, the Kingsley-Morans. All three of them, God help us…"

She keens, but this time there's no defiance in it. The only person she's fighting now is herself. This, to my utter disgust, is when the tears start. "Dalston. I don't actually know the name of the street, but I can get it up on Google. There's a jazz bar at one end of the street and a Nandos at the other, it's pretty unique."

"…Three of them in a flat."

Both her hands, including the one with that most unusual piercing, clap tight over her face. Mumbling through them, "Two floors, though, over a vinyl shop, but at the wedding they were talking about moving out of the city if Tom can get a job at a quieter hospital because Peter's getting to this age where he understands that Daddy's up all night stitching up knife-crime victims and pumping people's stomachs and-"

I grab her hands away. "You were _at_ the wedding?"

"I didn't go to the night thing. I don't think he noticed. He never even called to ask why."

As a supposed _friend_ and former associate of Moran's, I feel for her. As somebody who was supposed to be my agent and keeping an eye on the prick, " _Why_ didn't you go?"

"…Didn't have a date or nothing, did I?"

Starting to wish I hadn't been so quick to close the pin. But I let go of her hands before the trickle of red coming down from it can touch me. With just the tip of my finger, I reach out and flip the safety pin back and forth, but that's all. "I don't think I need to tell you, you fucked up."

"You don't need to tell me."

"Royally."

"Yeah, massively. Really big-style. I know I did. I'm sorry."

"I think you should start giving up current mobile numbers for both of the new, improved Moran collective, don't you?" She nods and starts spewing numbers, but I stop her. She can write them down for me in a minute. "What else, what else… Let's see, we could have some idea of Tom's working schedule, couldn't we? We could have a list of who all sat on Moran's side at this so-called wedding. Can't imagine that was a packed-out chapel. Oh, do you know what we could have? We could have the address for little Peter's school!" She shakes like somebody dying of frostbite. "And then, while I'm working through all that, you could take yourself and that box down the post office and have it sent to the home of the Kingsley-Morans, once I've put a note in with it and you've got said-home up on Google. Alright?" My angel nods, dragging her eyes dry with her undamaged hand. "Then why are you still crying, please?"

Breaking into a frankly disrespectful sob, "I just feel like such an awful person."

"You are an awful-" Mimicking the tearful shakes, "pe-he-he-her-son. You've disappointed me more than I thought you were capable of doing. But you're going to redeem yourself now, aren't you?"

"Yes, sir."

"Is it Moran? Is that why you feel bad? You feel like a traitor? Well, don't. The most traitorous thing you could do for Moran is help him to stay away from me. That's not just lying to _me_ – and we've discussed in the past what happens to people who lie to me, you've _witnessed_ that, and please don't think your little lies of omission don't count – but you're helping him lie to _himself_. This isn't what he wants. Not deep down. He's not a house-pet, our Seb. You know that. If you take a good hard look at it, you'll realize you know that, angel. He's not domestic. Husband and sprog and nine-to-five and Liverpool matches down the pub, that's not our Seb. Remember when he bumped off the entire Man United final squad for beating his Reds? Ah, how could you, that was before you joined us… He was over the moon. High on it. _That's_ what he's built for. So don't stand there, with that gormless frigging look on your face, and try to tell me that the Colonel is happy. Don't tell me he _likes_ this ugly little burrow he's dug out for himself. He doesn't. Okay?

"And if you love him, angel, sweetheart, terms of endearment, _a chuisle,_ as we would have said it in the old country, you'll help me open his eyes to that."


	4. Chapter 4

Seb was never meant to wear a buttonhole. It looks wrong on him. Where it sits, that bright carnation in his supposed- _wedding_ pictures, it's wrong. Only two things should ever have appeared on that spot. First, his military medals. And he sold those on an episode of Flog It years ago because he wanted to meet thon young posh twat sometimes does the valuing. He never did, got stuck with the old Scottish bat and the two of them ended up hagging about the East End on a four day bender.

I was sworn to secrecy over that, but all things considered I think I can spill that much.

The only other option is an entry wound. Single shot, through the heart. Probably not from another professional, who will always aim for the head, but from someone vengeful and teary-eyed. Moran was too precise to be taken out on the job. It always would have had to be personal.

If I hadn't left when I did, and if I had taken it into my head to arrange such a thing, it might have been the _darling_ Tom Kingsley who fired that shot.

The only carnation that ever should have spread itself unfolding across my Moran's lapel should have been the red bloom of blood around the bullet hole.

And that satin waistcoat, ugh… Dove grey, don't you know. Does nothing for a man of his breadth and shoulders. Looks lovely on our Tom, though.

The miniature version looks lovely on the little page boy who stands hip high on both of them. Little Peter, whom the Angel insists I once read a story to, the little coffee-coloured cherub. Obviously our Tom likes a bit of contrast for his creamy white complexion, that's just how he rolls (and both ways too, if you don't mind). I'm not saying there's anything _wrong_ with any of that, I'm just a bit worried at Seb getting caught up in it all.

All I'm _saying_ is that the waistcoats look good on the Kingsleys and not the Moran. This is something I'll put to the Angel when I see her later on. I'll tie her down to a chair in front of a computer screen, with this picture on it. And I'll ask her, what's wrong with that image? And she'll stare and stare and rack her meagre little brain stump and gnaw the ends of her hair.

At best, I'll get, _The Colonel's outfit didn't really suit him much, did it?_ At worst I'll have to tell her, and she'll have to suffer another lot of hours with the pin in her hand before I can be persuaded to fetch a pair of pliers. Christ, I can't wait to get my real friends back. Somebody to _talk_ to. Somebody smart enough to see that this _thing_ in the photograph has more in common with a circus tiger than with a man I know who once shot one of said-beasts at point-blank range during a vicious attack (if the tales are to be believed).

Although, Miss Damaged Goods 2014 did get _one_ thing right; the street they live on is pretty much unmistakable. There certainly are not a lot of jazz-bar-Nandos-combos in London Town, and definitely just the one in Dalston.

Two floors over a vinyl shop, she said. It is, at least, a bit more presentable than the bachelor pad he used to keep, with the home-gym in the basement and a window at either end of the attic in case the cops came for him some night.

I wonder where he hides the Uzis these days. They used to be up in the old flue of my fireplace, broken out only for special occasions.

Nobody's home when I get there, so I wander round the shop below. Ask, like I'm considering buying nearby, what the flats upstairs are like. "Any trouble with tenants?" is the key question. That leads to a loving description of the 'quiet', 'content' couple who live above, and 'the little smiler'. So I'm not missing anything. Doesn't sound like Seb's beating Tom black and blue around the kitchen. Doesn't sound like I'm being cut out because they've gone into freelance business together.

Then, even as I'm standing talking, a cab pulls up. Moran gets out at the far side, comes round to the curb. He's got little Peter, it seems. Must have had some sort of afterschool club. Peter is waiting with the curbside door open. Takes Daddy Number Two's hands and jumps down. This is a laugh between them. This has all the makings of a ritual. Me and My Sebastian, this jumping-out-of-cabs thing. Moran pays the driver, and grabs Peter up in one big arm so that he can learn to say thank you to menial labourers who have done him a service.

They have matching grins, these two children. Like Shaggy and Scooby. Argue amongst yourselves which one I am casting as the dog.

I heard their shoes go up the stairs. The cab was lingering, so I went out and took it. He was just changing radio stations, he said. He always changes to listen to Lauren Laverne. But the Radio Six leanings of a Dalston cabbie mean nothing to me. I toy with the idea of asking about the pair he just had in the back, but it's all a bit obvious. Still under the pretence of the house-hunter, I find out a bit about the area. That it's multicultural. That it's relatively acceptant and UKIP free. That it's nowhere you'd want to be buried for life and if you can afford better you ought to shoot for better.

But eventually, even a Dalston cabbie has to realize he's just been listening to my questions and the sound of his own voice, and that he has no idea where he's going. "Where to, then?"

"Tottenham Court Road."

Dead close to Euston Road, that. Dead close to University College Hospital. And if Moran's been picking up the Mini-Me from school, one can only assume that Daddy Dearest is at work.

"Halfway across town, is that."

"No skin off my nose, driver."

"Fair enough."

No, no skin off my nose, and worth every penny of the fare. Firstly, the drive gives me time to think. Not that I need any more time to think. Everything is already in motion. I'm _doing_ this already. But it's nice to reflect. Nice to take a little step back, to look at my actions objectively and say, yes, yes, this is the right thing. Best for me, best for Moran. In the long run, best for Tom and Peter Kingsley. Let's face it, it's only a matter of time before Moran remembers who he is and what he's meant for. They're going to get hurt, sooner or later. I'm just helping to get it over with. I don't even care if they blame _me_ for the loss of their beloved. They can blame me if they want.

That's how selfless this is. Do you get it? Don't even bother to answer me if you don't. Just piss off, dear and no-longer-so-constant reader. If you can't understand this, you don't know me at all, so why are you even here? Take yourself off. Here, have a tenner, get yourself some dinner on the way, but go the fuck home and stop wasting my time.

If you still believe this has anything to do with me, fuck right off.

I keep seeing that buttonhole. It's there when I shut my eyes, in lines like burning wires, all the fluttering petal edges cut out on the insides of my eyelids. This is not a new phenomenon. Before this it was the look on Sherlock's face when he realized what he'd have to give up because he had the stupid misfortune to like some people I knew about. Before that it was the look on Mycroft's face when he'd just admitted he had a brother. Before that… Before that who knows. It was less important before that.

Now it's the _fecking_ carnation, as though that deserves the same attention.

I get off where the driver leaves me. Pay him, and pay him the same courtesies as he got from Sebastian and Peter Kingsley-Moran (or was it Moran-Kingsley, I forget, neither even sounds right, it won't matter soon). This Dalston cabbie is having a _good_ day, a _friendly_ day. He'll go home smiling tonight, and find that the wife has done egg and chips for tea, which if I'm reading him right is probably his favourite. Good. Good, I'm glad for him.

Tottenham Court Road is busy, this time of day. Not gridlocked, like rush hour, but busy. Everything's moving fast, trying hard to get home for the day.

I was counting on that.

It makes it very easy to walk in front of a… I let the first bus past. Busses are big, have you ever noticed? Busses look like they could do you some really bloody damage. No, I let the bus go by me. Then I calmly and quietly step out in front of a Micra, ten years old or more, ice green. Driven by some hopeless little shopgirl who stares at me when I'm smeared on her windscreen, white and trembling. She looks like _she_ might scream while I am mildly noticing the plush white rabbit that sits on top of her dash. Nice touch, that. Bet she calls the car Alice. Certainly the colour is right. She gets out and races round to peel me off the bonnet.

"Are you alright?"

"Yeah, I'm fine, fine…"

"I… I'm so sorry, I didn't see you."

Story of my life, at the minute. She's _still_ not seeing me. If she was really seeing me she'd be running away. Or growing a big brass pair and placing me under some sort of citizen's arrest while I'm injured.

Yes, I'm injured. Make no mistake. I'm sitting up on the front of her car, but I am, very definitely, injured. Much as I tried to protect myself, arms down by body, pugilist position, all the shite, I'm down a couple of ribs. If my right arm is broken I'll be most annoyed, but I think it's just bad bruising. Head took something of a knock on her windscreen, but since the plexiglass isn't so much as cracked I suppose my cranium must be okay. It's bleeding, though; it comes off on my hand when I touch the new and tender lump.

"I…" stammers the terrified driver, "I'll call an ambulance."

"No, no," I tell her. "Honestly, I'm grand. Hospital's nearby anyway."

"Well, a lift, then."

"Nah, love, nah, you calm yourself. You get yourself home. I'm fine, really, absolutely grand. I'm fine." She's _trying_ to help me down. I take her elbow and stagger off her car, almost into another one. That's aggravating. One is enough, ta very much. So long as I've got that shooting pain in two ribs, I need chest x-rays. So long as I'm bleeding from a possible head trauma, I need a triage nurse in the accident department. So long as I've got a head trauma I'm perfectly justified in, all soft and confused-like, asking for this one nurse I know.

In scenes reminiscent of Frogger more than anything else, back and forth and back and forth-forth-forth in quick succession, I make it across the road. Across Grafton Way and round onto Beaumont Place. Spearmint Rhino's around here somewhere. Please don't ask how I know that, or why I associate it with A&E. There's a reason I know my way to the emergency room of the nearest hospital.

Anyway, I drag myself in there via the ambulance bay (there is, for the record, an odd, tingly numbness in my ankle that I'm not over-fond of). Sit patiently in triage, waiting behind all the split heads and the household accidents. Actually, there are no fewer than _three_ young people here, with guardians. On a weekday afternoon. I'm just saying, if I were acting as any sort of a father to young Peter Kingsley, I'd think twice about what sort of afterschool clubs I let him join. Clearly something is going very wrong around here. Or are things different in Dalston? Something to ask my cab driver if I ever get hold of him again.

"Bloody hell, mate, what happened to you?"

"Stepped in front of a Micra. Didn't think it would do a lot of damage, but I think it's because they're so small, I tumbled up over and it just hit me in all the right places."

"You mean the wrong places?"

I will, at that point, start taking down his name and ID number from the PSV licence that hangs on the rearview, because nobody corrects me over what I mean. Especially not when I'm right. 'Wrong' is a relative term. 'Wrong' would mean that I hadn't originally thought of the Micra as pussing out on the bus. 'Wrong' would mean that I never _intended_ to walk out in front of a speeding vehicle, to be spread on the windscreen mere plastic millimetres from the plush mascot. 'Wrong' would mean that I didn't want this to happen.

And as I sit there, hours and hours, reading an old Don Winslow on my phone (in flight mode, obviously – mobile use in hospitals is inconsiderate), none of this was unplanned.

Hours and hours, and I'm just getting to that bit where Art Keller muses on _el poder del perro_ , when, so very appropriately, a warm and crisp voice like an autumn day greets me by my current name and says, "I'm so sorry to have kept you waiting."

He's very blonde. _Suspiciously_ well high-lighted, so he is. He puts out his hand, skinny wrist sticking out of the end of blue scrubs.

"Not at all," says me. "Just thought I should get checked out."

Says him, "My name's Tom."

I already knew that, though. I've seen his pictures. 'My name is Tom and I look utterly fabulous in a dove-grey satin waistcoat'.


	5. Chapter 5

Tom’s very courteous.  Excellent bedside manner.  He talks his patient through everything, makes it all easy and normal and nothing to worry about.  

What a bastard.  No, seriously, think about it.  How long ago was this wedding?  Because it wasn’t last week.  You can tell, from how they act, how things are going on.  And wasn’t I informed (eventually) that there was some discussion, on the wedding day, of moving to the country if Tom could get a post in a quieter hospital?  Wasn’t I?  And yet here we sit.  Him and I, behind a curtain, still in bloody London.  

He’s _lying_ , obviously.  He doesn’t want to move to the _country_.  Look at that easy smile.  And he’s been here for ages.  The bags under his eyes, the stubbly shadow, these things tell me that.  And still smiling.  This is the best medical professional I’ve ever had the displeasure to have seeping, like rising damp, into my life.  He could _walk_ into any old job he chose.  But he hasn’t.  Telling our Moran they’d slope off somewhere quiet and live in peace.  What a prick…

“You’re in a bad way,” was how he greeted me.  “What happened?”    

“Car, out on the road there.  Some daft cow too busy singing along with the radio.”  Don’t worry about me, by the way; I’ve got my Brit voice on and he hasn’t been near a television in hours.  

“…And you walked in?”

“Tougher than I look, mate.”  So probably best not get on the wrong side of me.  Sadly for Tom, that’s where he is, and short of a rapid death or divorce, that’s where he’s staying.  

Actually, that’s an idea.  That would give me Moran back, wouldn’t it?  Might put the fire back up him too.  That’s an awful thought to have.  I don’t mind having it, though.  Somebody has to have the awful thoughts.  I used to have somebody to do it for me.  I’d have the wonderful thought, and the plan and all the great ideas.  And this person (not Moran, by the way) would sit in the corner and turn her wicked brain to picking out the awful parts.  Which was annoying as hell, but I must admit, it kept the cops from the door and it was a better safeguard against spooks than salt and holy water.  

Ought to see to that, too, soon enough.  

First things first, though, I’ll be seeing to this prick.  

The curtain around the little cubicle is the same colour as his scrubs.  It has the disconcerting effect of making him disappear except for the head and hands.  The head, as I said before, is very blond.  Can’t really hold that against him.  I’m sure I could try, but it might sound petty.  Younger than Moran.  That’s worrying.  Young single parent on a public service wage marries ex-serviceman with taverna on Mykonos?   

So he’s a _golddigging_ lying prick.  Oh dear.  

Excellent nurse though.  Said that before, but it’s worth reiterating.  That’s the one thing I can’t fault him on.  He confirms the car hit me, where I took the blow, where the pain is.  He assures himself (and me, I’m feeling very comforted, thank you) that the lump on my head is just cosmetic damage.  “A bit like the dent you must have left on the hood of that car.”  That gets a couple of paper stitches when he tells me about cranial trauma and concussion, which thankfully I’m not showing any signs of.  So long as I haven’t had my brain rattled, he says, the rest probably isn’t so serious.  He even acknowledges, with sympathy and respect for my stoicism, “It’s just the part that hurts.”

Which brings us to those hands of his.  Fine, soft hands.  The skin is a little dry from the alcohol cleanser they use in these places.  Needs a good manicure.  Other than that, perfectly acceptable hands.  It’s not until I need help getting my shirt off that I realize I’ve made a mistake.  Big mistake.  This whole thing has been one huge mistake.  

All the alcohol cleanser in the world can’t change the fact that I know where those hands have been.

Tom is a consummate professional.  There’s not so much as a flutter out of him.  At any rate, I’m not his type.  He’s _so_ far away from his partner and all that entails right now.  Me, I can’t get it out of my head.  These are the hands.  Soft and cool.  This is the same gentle pressure, and _maybe_ I wince a bit before I really feel the pain, just to make it stop.  Just to get my best mate’s husband’s hands off me.

I can’t tell you the _hate_ and the _bile_ I feel with him helping me back into my shirt.  

“And the pain, when you breathe in, sharp or-?”

“Tight.  Sore.”  The pain, this is, not me…

I think we must be done.  He’s reaching for the little pump bottle to clean his hands.  “On the bright side, this could have been much worse for you.  Most people who end up in front of cars don’t get off so lightly.  The bad news is, there’s not an awful lot that can be done for bruised ribs-“  He goes off on one about painkillers and ice and other sorts of pain relief.  Supposed to breathe properly, sore or not.  I’ll be honest, I’m not really listening anymore.  

I came here to meet him.  It only seemed fair.  He might have turned out to be a great fella.  I would have felt bad, going up against him.  He might have been a weak sort, who really needs somebody like Seb.  He might have been failing and run ragged and a bit hopeless, and I wouldn’t want to take that great big leaning-post of mine away from him.  

But he’s not.  Tom Kingsley(-Moran) is one sussed-out individual.  Totally in charge, in control.  He’s sorted.  He’s that fabled person who _actually_ has his head screwed on.  He’s also a liar, a golddigger and a prick.  

Green light, wouldn’t you say?

I leave Tom where he is to tidy up.  Beyond the blue curtain I straighten up as much as I can.  Try to look purposeful.  If I can walk like I belong here, no one will question me when I turn left, deeper into the hospital, instead of right towards the street.  

All down the corridor, I keep an eye on the doors.  Check one branch of the hall, then double back and check another.  One of these will have the words I want to see marked out on it.  

Ah.

 _Staff Only_.

The nearest locker room to A&E.  And just my luck, there’s nobody in.  Lovely job.  I slip inside and have a look about me.  

The staff have marked themselves out; strips of masking tape stuck up above the vents on the lockers.  I find out very quickly why Tom is a nurse and not a doctor; his handwriting is neat and square and clear.  Not dissimilar to my own.  Now, as a fact, I find that quite disgusting.  As an _idea_ , I like it very much.  I pick off the end of the tape and peel it down, tucking it into my pocket for future reference.  Then I get a look at the lock.  

Combination lock.  Cheap, standard.  British made.  Were I in better condition, I could put my knee to one end of the door, grab the other, and just pull it out.  Currently, it’s painful just thinking about that. 

But somebody taught me once about cheap combination locks.  I know where to listen and what way to turn the dial if I have to crack it myself.  I also know that the preset, the built-in code is two right, four left, six right.  How many people bother to change it?  You know the people you work with.  You’re protected by a door that says ‘staff only’.  What’s the worst that could happen?       

Two right…  And a click.  I feel it.

Always change your presets, boys and girls.  God, I bet he uses birthdays as passwords.  It’s working for me, but it doesn’t stop it being stupid.  I bet he still buys a lottery ticket every Saturday night.  I bet he gives charity donations by text when an advert tells him to.  Red Cross, Save The Children, Salvation Army, all that shite…  

The locker door swings open.  I stop thinking.  

There’s a photograph tucked into the sharp metal fold.  Small, almost private, stuck up in the corner.  Moran, and the child.  You’d expect that.  I’m almost getting used to that image.  What stops me now is the side of my former gun-hand wearing Mickey Mouse ears and sitting in one of the Mad Hatter’s teacups.  Disneyland.

I push the door right back against the next locker, out of my way.  What else have we got?  Wallet.  Couple of cards, no cash.  Another bloody photograph of the child; getting embarrassing now.  The clothes he came here in are simple, nothing special, tell me nothing I didn’t already know.  

Shall we be really honest with ourselves here?  Let’s.  While I’m going through his phone, while it’s just you and me, let’s.  I’m not here to learn anything.  I’ve got all I need.  I’m here for the simple pleasure of rooting through this man’s things.  I’m here to use his stuff, and be all over it, and invade the things that he holds dear.  Here to put sticky fingerprints all over what’s his.  

And then probably wipe them off again, just in case.  That’s hardly the point.

His text messages are dull.  I last all of five minutes with ‘Can you bring in milk?’ and ‘Peter needs a Pritt Stick for his homework’.  Getting bored, just about to put the phone back and get out of here.

Then a little flash of gold in this mountain of shite – _Still on for Annie’s 30 th?_

And Tom replies - _We wouldn’t miss it_.

So aside from the fact that he’s answering on Moran’s behalf as well as his own – but then we’ve already discussed that he’s an arsehole.  Sorry, I won’t go on about it.  Here on out we’ll take that as read.  

I hope that party hasn’t happened yet.

 


	6. Chapter 6

I haven't been in the new flat long enough to have anything in the freezer. I had to take myself to the Angel's place. She's got the opposite problem. Lots of stuff in her freezer. Bad sign; that's the sign of somebody who doesn't know how to shop. Buys things and shoves them away and never actually cooks for herself. Fetching out a bag of frozen peas almost leaves her with frostbite. It's one solid block so she takes after it with the handle-end of a meat cleaver to break it up. Then reaches for a damp rag of a tea towel lying next to her sink. "Don't even think about it."

 

So she goes to the drying rack hung on the radiator and gets a clean t-shirt instead. Wraps the peas in that and brings them over. She retreats once I've settled them against my ribs, sitting on the arm of the chair opposite. "So… Sorry, I know you already told me, but why did you walk in front of a car again?"

 

"Reconnaissance."

 

"No, I know. You wanted to meet Tom. But… But why did you have to-?"

 

"If the rest of that sentence goes the same way as what you said before-"

 

"Alright, but what I mean is, why couldn't you just fake something?"

 

She's lucky I'm injured. She's unlucky that I'm discovering the power and pressure of broken ribs. Because if mine are only bruised, she's beautifully fucked whenever I start experimenting. I might send back to Dublin for a hurl. Like a hockey stick, except hockey is a nice, gentle, girls-boarding-school type of game. Hurling has more in common with rugby and everybody's carrying around these long ash bats with weighted ends. Fake? Teach her all about fake when the left side of her chest is concave.

 

But there's no sense in showing my hand too soon. For now I'm stuck in this chair. For now I have a use for her.

 

"Never fake anything," I say, disguising it as a kind little lesson. "You'll run into an expert and get caught." There's an awful, questioning silence. She lifts her brows at me, trying to phrase something she knows will make me angry. Thinking of one particular incident. "That was different."

 

"Like, if you're going to say anybody's an expert in that, and in faking that; you did it right in front of him. So, I know he's a proper medical nurse and all, but you could probably have fooled Tom if you'd just pretended something."

 

The saddest thing of all is that there's a compliment buried in there somewhere. "Is there anything stronger than Anadin in this rat-trap?"

 

She scuttles off to look. Hopeless. This is why I need my real friends back. Moran always had morphine lying about, and topical anaesthetics in case of buckshot. Charlie kept high-grade Thai codeine in case of angry husbands. Danielle had an entire pharmacy of semi-recreational numbness and calm I could have availed myself of.

 

While the contents of a bathroom cabinet go clattering into the sink, the angel shouts back to me, "Tom's nice, isn't he?"

 

"No."

 

"He always seemed really nice when I met him."

 

"Yes, but he's a liar." She brings back pills, and I have her sit by my feet while I explain the truth. Moran's been taken in, same as she was. It takes somebody like me, somebody clear-sighted, coming back in from outside, to see what people are really up to. I tell it to her in clear logical points. At the end she sits silent, twirling her hair around her fingers. "You don't believe me, angel."

 

"Of course I do."

 

"You don't, either.

 

"…I believe you. I just can't believe him. He seemed so lovely."

 

"He's no friend of ours, dear. Repeat that for me. Properly believe it and I'll take that pin out of your finger."

 

She hangs her head. Sensing the old traps, edging around them. "It's-not-bothering-me-you-decided-it-should-be-there-so-I'm-okay-with-it-being-there-and-"

 

"Angel, don't push it."

 

"Tom's no friend of ours. Tom's not who I thought he was. I have to help you help the Colonel. He's happy now but it doesn't mean he's going to stay that way. We're doing the right thing. Tom's no friend of ours."

 

I pick up her hand and unhook the safety pin around her nail. Her shoulders tighten but that's all. Then I pull it, and nothing happens. Suction from inside and the scabbing at either end are holding it in place. "Go and get me a pair of pliers."

 

"You don't have to."

 

Yeah I do. We need to make our next move, and make it relatively quickly. Can't have her showing up with her finger still pierced. That would give away more than I really want to. "Go and get me a pair of pliers."

 

She can act as meek and mild as she wants; the tool is waiting, tucked down the side of the kitchen drawer. And I give her the use of the frozen peas and one of the pills. This is an awful lot of kindness. She knows better than to look at me with suspicion, but it's coming off her in waves. That's gratitude for you. For sheer badness, just to confuse her, "Are you ready? You don't need to bite down on something or-?"

 

"No, I think I'll be-" While she's talking I pull it out fast. She gasps, but that's all, and manages to mumble through it, "Thank you."

 

I was holding her fingers together to keep them steady. She thinks I'm letting go of her until my hand claps shut around her wrist again. I hold her there in front of me. "Let me explain what's going to happen next."

 

Shouldn't really use the word 'explain'. Should just say 'tell'. More honest. 'Explain' might imply she has some choice or input.

 

What's going to happen (oh aye, much better, that feels much better) is that tomorrow morning she's going to get on her roller skates. She likes her skates. Best way to navigate London, she says. Told you she was mad. Anyway, they let her move fast. They'll let her be barrelling down the street so she doesn't see the non-descript security guard.

 

While I describe it to her, I start to picture it.

 

She'll bash straight into him, head to chest. He'll recognize her first. While the angel barks 'excuse me' and tries to take off again, he'll be holding her back.

 

"Alright, our Scout?"

 

Then another collision as she throws her arms around him. "Oh, Colonel, did you hear?"

 

And Moran will return the hug. Whether they've seen each other lately, whether he likes her anymore or not, that's irrelevant. That's my influence, don't you know. That's me bringing people together. "Don't know that anybody could have missed it, kid."

 

You understand, I'm making this up. I'm giving the Angel her script based on my predictions of what Moran might say.

 

"Have you seen him?"

 

He might deny it. More than likely he'll remember those few interrogation skills we were able to beat into him down the years and try to deflect the question. "Have you?"

 

I tell her, "You will then, sweetheart, shake your head. You'll need to look torn up, tortured. And you say 'No'. No, you haven't seen me. But your allowance has stopped coming into the bank and you don't know what to do anymore. You're lost and broke. Be subtle and embarrassed about the broke part."

 

"Subtle and embarrassed. Right. But, um… can I just ask-?"

 

"You're still getting your money."

 

"Right. So why do I have to lie to the Colonel?"

 

"Because he'll feel guilty. He's seen me and not wanted me. You wanted me and have been denied. He'll try to help. And given you're essentially a giant child, you are ostensibly good with children. They're going to a birthday party this weekend, him and Tom. They'll need a babysitter."

 

"But I… I… But we can't… Peter? Really? What do you… We can't."

 

"Are all of those little bits of sentences mean to be telling me something?"

 

She hangs her head. "No, sir."

 

 

 


	7. Chapter 7

"Crayola markers?"

"Check."

"Home Alone DVD?"

"Check."

"Bag of Tangfastics?"

"Check."

"Good. Now c'mere til I put this mic on you."

Wireless radio microphone. Leftover from the old days. The very old days, before I got to be above such petty things as running a job myself or watching somebody's security cameras for them. It's got a battery pack to go under her jumper at the back and a tiny, flesh-tone receiver that gets taped to her collarbone. All of this she stands passively and lets me do. Lifts her jumper when I need her too, lifts her arm for the wire to go under, pulls her hair out of the way. But that's all. No help, no enthusiasm. She can't even bring herself to plaster a little smile on her face.

One could very easily find oneself getting rather annoyed with her, couldn't one?

She's had two days to come to terms. She came to me right after Moran made her the offer, in tears, trying to tell me she couldn't do it. She's got a bruise that tells you all about that. It's not as big as I'd hoped, but that's just because I woke up sore all over that morning. Combination of her cheap painkillers wearing off and realizing exactly what I'd done the day before. It got to me. I even caught myself giving serious consideration to the idea of finding the driver of the green Micra and offering some sort of apology.

Maybe that was what gave me the sympathy and understanding to then sit her down and explain it all again.

I _know_ ; the generosity of it is staggering. I should _never_ have to explain a thing twice. I made sure she knew that and she hasn't made me do it since.

Now, however, here at the crucial moment, I can sense some ill-advised remnant of that reluctance. I stop what I'm doing. Let go of her, walk away toward the office. "No!" she yelps, "No, please." Too late. Far too late, angel, I'm sorry. That's the thing about doubt. You don't have to say it out loud. It just has to be there. "But I can't go there with a pin in me! He'll know! And it'll freak Peter out…"

Hm? Oh, no, safety pins had never crossed my mind. Can't be using that all the time. Then it wouldn't be special anymore. No, I've got something else in mind.

"Shoes off, dear." I watch her to it, with a packet of elastic bands in my hand. She has tiny little feet, you know. Now that I'm looking at them, there's nothing to them. Very dainty. Believe me, though, I've seen her eat and dainty isn't the word that springs to mind. Sifting through the bands, I find two which are comparably small. To give you an idea, they fit comfortably over two of my fingers. And they're orange. She'll like that. She likes orange.

For the sake of health-and-hygiene regulations, she can keep her socks on. I sit on the edge of the coffee table and take one foot into my lap.

"Now, Angel-"

"I'm so sorry. I wasn't even really questioning you, I just feel like-"

"Like a terrible human being. Like the despicable something the Colonel ought to be scraping off his shoes. That's alright, that's exactly how you should feel. That's what you are. But the trick is to get _over_ that." As I speak, I am stretching one of the bands a little loose and starting to ease it over her foot. It takes the first one-two-three toes with relative ease. After that it's more difficult. It pinches, like string on a good pork roast. Makes a nice clear division. If you took an axe, it would give you a neat, useful guide to lopping off that front pad of the foot. I'm pleased with that. She's biting her lip, holding her breath, so it's doing the job. I take her other foot and begin the same process. "The fact that you're scum shouldn't get in the way. In fact, it ought to make you all the more determined to be useful, don't you think? Trust me, this is the _only_ useful thing you're going to do for him."

Nodding. She takes her teeth out of her tongue long enough to confirm with herself, "Yes. For him."

"Yes. Also for the person who hauled you out of the gutter in the first place and has kept you well ever since, if you don't mind…"

"Thank you. Thank you so much, I never, ever forget it."

"You just talk like you do sometimes. Now, have you got everything?"

She thinks, hard. Runs herself through the whole checklist again. She doesn't have everything. I know this. Just thought I'd give her the chance to redeem herself. Bright as the lightbulb clicking on, "Earpiece, sir!"

"Just so," and I fetch it from the desk drawer. The whole evening falls apart if I can't communicate with her. In a little plastic box, I hand her a tiny clear earbud. Another leftover. Sort of thing Moran used to wear so I could tell him if the spooks were coming or if his exit was blocked. I close all these fond memories under the Angel's fingers. "Don't lose that. And don't put it in until the happy couple are off the premises. Moran'll know right away and Tom's medical, he'd never believe it's a hearing aid. Give me a text once we're live."

It seems were back to the sullen, silent nodding, but I'll let it go. In part, because her big toes are starting to turn a charming shade of beetroot purple.

"Try and stand up for me?"

Her feet, until now, haven't touched the floor, but hovered a millimetre or so over the carpet. The first pressure she puts on them her eyes go wide and she reels. All the tendons in her neck go tight. Gingerly, reminiscent very much of Bambi's early days, she puts herself over them. Slowly, slowly, flattening down, pushing up from the armchair. I'm starting to think I should have lit on this idea sooner. The noise in the back of her throat speaks very much of someone who is learning her lesson.

With a courage I can't help but respect, she forces her back straight. Forces herself to smile over at me, "Absolutely fine." Brimming eyes only add to the baby deer effect. I let her sit back down and put her shoes on. Maybe that'll help pad her a bit.

"If you're good from now on I'll let you take them off once you're clear of the Morans."

"Kingsley-Morans."

"If you're good from _now_ on I'll let you take them off half an hour after they leave."

She puts her shoes on again. Never once opens her mouth. I think she's afraid to. It does get her in an awful lot of trouble. I hope that's not the lesson she's learning. Certainly it's not the one I'm trying to teach her. My lesson is about what goes on in her head that _leads_ to those stupid things coming out her flapping lips. My lesson should be getting her somewhere much deeper down.

Then she picks up the earpiece in its case, and is about to pocket it, when she stops. "Does this have enough range for you to talk from here?"

"No. But I'll be closer than that, so I wouldn't worry."

"Where will you be?"

"In range. Past that, don't you bother your head about it. Now come on, I'll give you a lift."

"Oh thank you." She picks her way across the floor like burning coals. I won't tell her now, but when she's getting out of the car she'll be informed in no uncertain terms that if anybody sees her limp she's done for. "Are you sure you want to, though? I mean, what if you bump into him?"

I'm meant to. That's the point.

You get this, don't you? This isn't something I have to explain. I _have_ to bump into him. It has to be tonight, when he'll be with Tom. Because I need to see what he says, what he does. Moran's reaction will tell me a lot about how to play things from here on out.

I'd love him to attack me. I know, I know, glutton for punishment, asking for it, all that shite. But think about it. If Moran throws a punch, that does two things. Firstly, that he's not _deeply_ pissed off with me. Just angry. Holmes got his nose broke when he came back. That's to be expected. And secondly, if he punches me, Tom will want to know why. This time he might look at me properly. This time he might take himself a couple of twos and make a four of them.

Yeah, I'd love him to attack me. That's the answer I'm looking for. That's the same as a gushing Yes and a great big hug. I'll take that as an 'Oh Jim, can you ever forgive me?' and be satisfied.

Probably won't be that easy though. Nothing ever is.

These are the thoughts that occupy me as I drive the Angel down to Dalston. She's ahead of time, and too early even to be being that good babysitter who shows up to get instructions and bedtimes and such. So I tell her to walk around the block a couple of times. I sit back in the car and leave the headlights on long enough to watch her around the corner. Just to check, you understand, that she's not hobbling. I'm just being a good boss. Wouldn't let her go in there and give herself away. I drive past her when I'm repositioning myself. To make sure she's doing as she's told, and to get the car out of the way.

There's not long to wait before I get her message. My phone bleeps, but I make sure not to open the text itself. What's to see, anyway? Know exactly what it'll say.

Now the Angel will be hanging on to hear my voice in her ear. She can hang a bit longer.

I get out of the car. Make my way around the corner, making a point of being distracted by the tone from the traffic lights on the corner.

Down the dark street, coming towards me –

"Seriously, are you sure I can't go back and watch Home Alone with Peter and Odd and a bag of Tangfastics?"

"…Odd?"

"Tilly, I mean. Don't ask, old joke."

"Look, we told Chris we'd go to this."

"Don't try and shift blame. _You_ told Chris we'd go to this."

"Don't be like that, it'll be-Oh. Excuse me." Because you see, Tom's just walked into me. In fairness, I helped him do so. I helped it to be under one of the streetlights so I can feasibly recognize him. So there's nothing _too_ unbelievable when I peer at his face and the scales fall from my eyes.

"My days," I say, and forcibly shake his hand. "I'm sure you don't remember you probably see so many coming through every day but-"

"No, no, I… Car got you, didn't it?"

"Didn't half. Listen, thanks again, I've never been in and out of a hospital so easy in all my-" And now my phone bleeps again. Silly machine, it thinks I don't know I have a message. It's just reminding me, the Angel's text is sitting there unread. Now I open it, so the glow of the phone will light my face, just in case he's missed me, because I don't know if you noticed, but Moran hasn't said a word yet, not one word. "I… I'll be off. Cheers again, though, it's all I can say."

Tom shrugs, oh, it's nothing, oh, do it every day, don't mention it. And the message has happened, so I've got no excuse to stand any longer. I have to go.

He hasn't said anything. He's stood there with his hands in his coat pockets and said nothing. Not a whisper.

I…

I walk on. Behind me, conversation picks up again. That arrogant sod Moran's married too gets all puffed up and chuffed with himself, "Isn't that nice?" all that shite. And Moran could be mumbling, but honestly I still don't hear anything.

I walk on. What else can I do? I walk back round the block and get back into the car. There's a Bluetooth earpiece in the door pocket. When I slip it on, the Angel's in the bathroom from the echo of her, hissing, "Hello? Are you… Bloody told him the range wouldn't-"

"Bloody told who, dear?"

"Oh, hi!"

"I… I'm here, just… Just give me a second. Take the bands off your feet now. Go and play. I'll… Just give me a minute."


	8. Chapter 8

The Angel wants to know if I’m alright. She keeps working it into her conversation with the child and she’s not half so subtle or clever as she thinks she is. Peter (who as it turns out has all of seven delicate little years behind him) is starting to catch on. That ought to tell you something.  
“Yes, I’m fine,” I tell her. A bit quick, actually. Probably sounding very not fine.   
“What did he say?”   
Peter repeats the last line from their little movie night and she has to pretend to laugh.   
“Nothing, he didn’t say anything.”  
“Please?” and Peter just thinks she wants one of the sweets.  
“He said nothing, dear, and you’d do well to take that to heart, and learn a little lesson from it.” She knows better than to even acknowledge that I spoke, now. She falls quiet, finally acting like a decent spy. Hopeless cow; she thinks she’s such a delight, y’know. She’s feeling so helpful, and useful. She hasn’t dared to say as much, but that ridiculous excuse for an angel thinks I need her.   
Can I tell you something? Because I can’t tell her and for now I have no one else to tell. It’s killing me. I have to tell it. Until now, it was one of those secrets that was content to stay secret. In the weakness of my long absence, I didn’t like thinking about it. There was perhaps even a touch of guilt associated with the whole notion.   
Maybe it’s this whole thing with Moran tonight. Maybe it’s just sparked me up dead cruel, or maybe I’m just getting back into the swing of things, but all of a sudden I feel the need to tell it, and to revel in the telling.  
So here it is, just between you and me.  
The Angel is dead. She doesn’t know it yet, but she’s deader than I ever was. She’ll help me get the best of my people back and then, when they can take over, she’ll come to the swift and startling realization that she’s been dead for some time, and will in fact be starting to decay by then.   
Oh yes. Oh, that’s me feeling much better now, thanks.  
“Alright, kid, we need to find out where we stand with the Colonel. And you’re feeding sweets to the best possible source. Old enough to lie, too young to do it well. Just let me lead and even you can’t fuck this up. But first things first, I want you to find out if that parcel we sent has arrived yet.”  
That would explain things, wouldn’t it? Say our package, and my note, arrived this morning. Say, for instance, Tom was the one who brought it into the house, and he was curious. Seb would have had no way of knowing, probably not even a suspicion, that it might have come from me. He would have had to open it in front of his spouse. And that would really help to explain why he felt the need to blank me, so totally, in the street before.   
But then, they were in such a good mood, the two of them. Tom didn’t strike me as so forgiving a person. And if he is, then I really am in the shit...  
“Peter?” She’s got her arse in gear, it seems, we’re back on.  
Sounding much more interested in the film than in anything she might have to say, “What?”  
“You’re too old for Postman Pat, aren’t you?”   
“Yeah.” How dare she even mention such childish things in his presence? I told you before, didn’t I, how people don’t change? I know men in their sixties who still get on like that.  
“Sorry. It’s just mine really looks like him. Except he brought me a parcel the other day and it was so big he couldn’t actually see round it. He fell and hit his head.” Peter goes into a gale of giggles; just the right sort of humour. Where’s she taking this though? “I love getting parcels. It’s the best thing ever.”  
There is a terrible silence. I’m not in there and I can still watch depression sink over the smaller of two children like a heavy blanket. “…Never get any parcels.”  
“Oh, love, but I bet your dad does.”  
“Only off Amazon. Nothing big enough to make a postman fall over.”  
“What about Sebastian?”  
“No. What was in your parcel?”  
Nothing of interest. While she wins him back round to giggling, I factor this in. Moran’s still got that one surprise coming to him. After his ever-so-fortuitously running into the Angel, he’s liable to put two and two together when that arrives. He’ll be the one to contact me.   
So that’s coming to me, anyway.   
“Well done, dear, sharp as a razor clam. Now lead on to Seb more genera-“  
“Tilly?”  
It’s not often I’m cut off. I don’t think a seven-year-old has been responsible since I was seven myself. But here we find ourselves, and the way the rest of the night has gone, I’m not even surprised. Once I remember that Matilda, Tilly, is the name the probably-botoxed Mr Kingsley knows her under, I shut up, and leave it in the boy’s pudgy, Play-doh hands.  
“Yes, Peter?”  
“How do you know Sebasdyun?”  
“We used to work together.”  
“In the army?”  
“Sort of, yeah.”  
“Is that why you call him Colonel and why he calls you Scout?”  
“You are so clever, little man.”  
“But he only calls you Scout when Dad’s not listening. Is it a secret?”  
She hesitates. I feel the need to hiss in her ear, “You are far too young to have served with Seb. Don’t let him fetch that back to his da.”  
“Well, it is a little bit of a secret, if you wouldn’t mind keeping it.”  
“I can keep secrets. Seb’s got loads.”  
She needs to be careful, or he’ll clam up. He’s just boasted how good he is at keeping his confidences, and some kids are proud of a thing like that. Never understood that attitude myself. What good is any information if you just hold it? There’s no sense having an ace if you don’t play it, surely? But he’ll learn, he’ll grow and learn. “Angel, repeat after me-“  
Her echo is all but simultaneous with my voice, “Yeah, I know.” Peter must be absolutely stunned. He’s got nothing to say but the angel tells him again, “Oh, totally.”  
First parcels and now secrets; she’s taking away everything that makes him cool. Actually, it’s quite a good set-up for getting information out of somebody. Make him think he’s got nothing else to offer, make him just desperate to impress. I keep forgetting he’s seven. It’s not my fault, I’m not in there to see it.  
It hits me like a fresh thought and I shake off that strategy. Feed her another line instead.  
“Yeah, I know them all from when we worked together. Hey, what ones has he told you? We could swap secrets.”  
He doesn’t know about this. This sounds an awful lot like breaking all that trust he’s got with Sebasdyun. They might not be mates anymore, him and Second Dad, if he does it. But he’s sorely tempted. You can hear it down the microphone, like a crackle on the line, the strain in his little heart. Go on, son. Give it up. Childish things, secrets. Everybody feels a lot better when they’re all gone. Go on. You want to, you do, you know you go, come on-  
“Did you know that he’s got two birthdays?”  
Oh. Oh, dear me, Mr Moran. How very naughty. Letting that slip to the lad, and then making it a secret. Nah, mate, don’t be telling your daddy that, now. No, couldn’t have him questioning.   
It’s true, of course. Seb has two birthdays. He has one which is the day he was born on, the day Mother Moran did all that huffing and puffing, the first time his head was shiny and bald. And then he’s got the one I gave him, when the army had fucked him and he needed a new name and new everything to go with it. That’s the one on his passport and his driver’s licence and everything official, so I suppose that’s the one I celebrate.  
He celebrates. Him. His birthday, he celebrates. Moran’s birthday hasn’t so much as occurred to me since my untimely demise.   
But then that day in April comes round. Maybe he still wakes up thinking about presents that day. Spring sunshine and he forgets, for just a second, that he already got his presents. A month before Christmas, which was always a pain in the arse if you didn’t know what to get him. Not that I ever had that problem. You just cycle round from new handgun to new rifle to new semi-automatic, throw in the occasional new explosive to keep things interesting, and one watch every two years so he doesn’t suspect there’s some sort of pattern.   
I don’t suppose it’s that easy for Tom, y’know. What do lovers do for presents? Chocolate, underwear? Or am I being terribly old-fashioned?  
Oh, that’s not a line of thought I want to continue with, no, no it’s not.   
But I digress – the Angel needs something to give back.  
“I knew that,” I say through her. “Did you know he has two names?”  
“What?! Really?! Cool, what’s the other one, this is so cool.”  
“Jonathan. You ask him all about Jonathan tomorrow.”  
“I will!”  
“But you didn’t hear it from me, right?”   
I didn’t tell her to say that. Maybe she’s just protecting herself, trying to preserve her standing with that beloved Colonel of hers. Starting to sound all sad and guilty too. As if I needed any more reasons to be finished with her. She’s just got so much silly heart left in her. Partly this is my fault – some of that heart has grown back since I left her behind. Apparently I forgot to sow the ground with salt.   
She’ll give us away, if this goes on much longer.  
So I tell her, gentle as I can manage, “I think we’ve buried enough mines for one night. Stand down, scout.”  
“Stop it.”  
I’m going to give her the benefit of the doubt and assume that Peter was poking her or something. Starting the long process of her murder early wouldn’t work out for me at all.


	9. Chapter 9

After that, lest she start chatting and blow our cover, I get out of range.  Specifically, I get myself to what the Angel generously termed a ‘jazz bar’ on the corner, and am happily surprised to find it’s really just a dimly lit cupboard off the street.  The look on the barman’s face tells me it’s going under.  I’m cut up for him, really I am, but it means I can get a bit of peace.  And, even on a weekend in the evening, there’s next to no waiting for a drink.  I’ll take that any day.  I’ll take it twice when the painkillers are wearing off. 

I park myself up in a corner and let Peter and the Angel lull me.  Listening to them, I force myself past the point where their utter inanity drives me to a rage and frustration I can’t even describe to you.  It actually becomes rather soothing, like listening to white noise.  You could almost forget that one of them is twenty years of age.  Well, nearly.  Maybe.  I remember when I found her, I gave her ID that said eighteen, but I think I did that because I knew she wouldn’t pass for it on her own.  Oh, God knows…

So the Angel sails them both happily through bedtime with hardly a hitch (except that silly Sebasdyun didn’t turn the washing machine on when he put stuff in it and the best jungle pyjamas are still out of action), and then sits humming to herself in front of the film channels.  She’s having a little cry at _Legally Blonde_ , bless her ginger heart, when, “I don’t know if you’re still listening, but they’re back so I’m taking the earpiece out now.  Bye.”

I have this awful flash of an idea that Moran’s going to join her on the sofa squealing about someone in a bunny outfit.  Oh, and Tom too, I suppose.  Or maybe he’ll go and see his _son_ , like a man might, but let’s not get too hopeful…

They come in all drunk and smiling, you can hear it all over them.  Must’ve had a decent night after all. 

First it’s just Moran, “Alright, Scout?!”

“Hello, Colonel.”

“Little man in bed?  We held you the cab, do you want the cab?  Tom’s holding it.”

“No, it’s alright.  I’m meeting people, it’s not far.”

“Have you got mates now, Scout?”

“Tom’s holding the cab?”

“ _Tom!  Tom, she doesn’t need it_.”  You forget so easily that one of the people in this conversation is closer to forty than any other milestone.  “So who’re you going out with, then?”

“Just mates.”

There’s rustling and thumping as she gets dragged into a hug.  Whatever he says gets lost, but it’s something about ‘glad’ and ‘moving on’.  I think I’m glad I don’t hear the rest.  In fact, I stop listening altogether.  We’ll gloss over her bumping into Tom on the path, how he’s a bit more sober.  He’s the one who says thanks, and remembers they’re supposed to be paying her for her services.  We’ll skim that.  We’ll skim the brief interval as she rushes down the street.

We’ll jump to her handing me her microphone.  It’s still got the tape on it.  She fumbles with the battery pack strapped around her waist, but she gets it off, and all but _throws_ it on the table in front of me.

Where we’re sitting, we’re quite public.  People are looking. 

“Give me your hand.”

I only say it to make her think.  When she puts it in mine, and I can feel it shaking, I know she’s wakened up.  I put all that equipment she just flung at me into her palm and point at her backpack.  “Yes,” she says.  “Of course.  Sorry.”  Squirrels it all away and leaves the bag by her feet.  After that I wait.  It doesn’t take very long.  “No, really, I’m sorry.  I didn’t mean to be-“

“Dramatic.”

“Yes.”

“Obnoxious.”

“Yes, sorry.”

“Ungrateful.”

“I especially didn’t mean to be that.”  Her hands are folded, foot tapping.  Looking with longing at the drink in front of me.  “I’m going to get something.  Do you want something?”

No.  No, I don’t.  In fact, as I tell her, standing up, the only thing I want is to get away from here.  I want to get _her_ away from here.  She’s making a fool of herself, and much as I would love to sit here feeding out rope that she might wind herself a fine noose, even this dive isn’t quiet enough for that. 

The Angel doesn’t get up right away.  She has to be pulled up out of her seat by the arm.  She has to be made to stumble her first step or two before she starts to walk.  And in all of this, her _only_ show of good sense, or any sense, is to stay a half-step back where I can’t see her, and to get in the car when I tell her to do so.

“Look,” which really isn’t a way that _anyone_ should start a sentence with me, “I said I was sorry.  I didn’t mean to be so nasty about it but…”  She drops her head into her hands, keening.  If she’s looking for sympathy she can look again.

“You keep ending sentences with ‘but’.  It makes me think you’ve got more to say.”

“Please don’t ever make me do anything like that ever again.”  Coward.  Coward, she can’t even lift her eyes to me.  If she’d ever shown a single scrap of backbone, I might have respected her.  We might have been friends if the Angel had ever done something other than just cower and take it.  “Peter’s seven.  And the Colonel’s been so good to me.  You probably don’t even remember but you told me once I was supposed to stop eating, and I did, but he was the one who remembered to tell me to start again.  And when Morgan visited and he hit me and I was unconscious, that was another two days, and the Colonel was the one who moved me to a bed.  And I know we agreed he couldn’t possibly be happy like this but…”

“…You see what you just did _again_ there?”

“…But I think he is.  And I think he’d be miserable if we changed that.”

Unconscionable bitch.  Here we go again.  The same thing she’s been mumbling all week and me, with the patience of the Christian martyrs, explaining over and over again that she’s wrong, and yet here we are.  She thinks he’s happy.  She thinks he’d be miserable.  She thinks I would intentionally make him miserable.

“Well,” I say, and I’m glad I had that drink because it makes the acting easier, “it seems you’re convinced of that.  I suppose you’re entitled to be.  Much as it might pain me to admit it, you’ve got the right to be wrong if you really want to.”

Wary, not familiar with the gambit, “…Really?”

“Yeah.  I can’t say I’m happy to lose your help.  You did well tonight and until now I was quite pleased with you.  But If you don’t want to be involved, I can’t force you.”  She draws back.  Sits against the door with her hand on it.  “I swear to Christ, if you say ‘ _really?’_ again, nothing will stop me trying very hard to force you, whether I can or not.”

“No, no.  I really appreciate it.”

“Don’t mention it.”

There’s a good deal of silence to follow on from that.  She so stunned it takes her ten minutes to realize these aren’t the streets she expected to be driven along.  “You’re not taking me home?”

Of course not.  Whether I’m getting her help or not, I might need her _personally_.  Especially while I’m injured.  If she doesn’t mind, I’ll be keeping her close by. 

Her gratitude blooms, red and heady as poppies, huge and all-consuming.  To still be involved, to still be needed, even after speaking so harshly against me, that’s a gift she could never have dreamt of.  She thought I’d be _finished_ with her.  Bless her heart.      

So I take her back to the new flat. 

Show her the spare room, with which she is well-impressed.  I’m glad of that.  That’ll work out for her. 

“I suppose you’re wanting to turn in.”

“Yeah.  Peter’s got me run ragged.”

“I’m sure.  Can I ask you one little thing first, though?”  She turns round slowly.  Nods, big eyes.  This is more familiar ground.  Now she knows something is coming.  “Way back, when you were still a novelty, I gave you a necklace.”  Mute, she fishes it out from under her t-shirt.  Two little wings on a fine gold chain.  I let them rest in my palm.  “You’re still wearing it.”

“Of course.”

“Why are you still wearing it?”

“Because you told me not to take it off.”

“Be specific, Angel.  I know you remember.”

She shuffles.  There must be something terribly interesting in that corner with the chimney breast.  There must be a two-headed spider or something, because fecking sure she won’t look at me.  But she remembers, yes she does.  She remembers everything I’ve ever told her.  It’s all she’s got.  The girl with no name except the ones I call her, with no purpose except the one she gets from me, she remembers.  “You told me dogs don’t take their collars off.”

“That’s right.  You’d never take it off.  And you’d never want it to get broken either, would you?” I grab it tight.  She panics.  Not for her strangled throat but, as expected, for the straining chain.  “Good dog.” 

Like a good dog she allows herself to be led.  I settle her comfortably on the bed, sitting up against the headboard.  Then reach behind her.  The clasp of the necklace is stiff with disuse and grime from her skin.  But it clicks open eventually.  I pass it around one of the wooden posts behind her and fasten it again. 

It works quite nicely.  The headboard gets in her way and stops her from reaching back to unclasp it.  It’s taut around her neck, biting deep into flesh.  Too tight for her to risk turning it.  When she tries to speak, the vibrations in her throat make the little pendants tremble. 

If the Angel doesn’t want to help me, that’s fine.  But she knows too much to have her just running about.  I’m not even supposed to be alive. 

I leave her where she is, with the wheeze in her breath.  As the door closes on her, “Stay.” 

* * *

 

[A/N - Thanks for the support so far, folks.  Jim's above all that shite, but the Angel and I appreciate it.  Two things - firstly I was thinking of letting Seb narrate a bit of this tale of woe (especially since Peter is going to ask him about his other name).  If you think it's an awful, horrible idea, speak now or forever shut your bake.

Secondly, for those who were asking about a certain thieving slag...  Yes this is an AU to House of Cards.  So yes, that means certain things.  I don't know yet whether I'm going to go there or not.  Seb might not have punched thon sod when he came back, but Dani's always got that razor of hers in a close pocket...

Thanks again, and please do drop an opinion on these burning issues if you're reading and enjoying.  Review, PM, Tumblr, feckin carrier pigeon, don't care.  Much love,

Sal.]


	10. Chapter 10

As the early hours of Sunday creep by, as I lie awake because the Angel is singing to herself to keep from sleeping and snapping that stupid cheap chain, let me tell you something.  I’ll ruin the effect if I go in there and strangle her, so let me tell you something instead, distract myself that way.  

Seeing he’s on my mind, let me tell you something about our Moran.  Now, he’s a simple fella.  Don’t know if you’ve noticed that.  There isn’t a terrible lot to him.  All you plebs out there must be screaming at me over that.  How dare I?  Isn’t he a human being, with all the dazzling, kaleidoscopic complexity that entails?  And isn’t he, in addition, rather a _mysterious_ human being, to have come inot this world under one name and grow up to face it with another?  Factor in the military history, the years he spent in my employ, and this most recent adventure into the peaks and troughs of domestic bliss, you must be asking me what could ever possibly be considered simple about Sebastian Moran.

But that’s all just on paper.  

If you met him, if you actually knew him…  He’s the most easy-going big lout you could ever hope to meet.  

I remember – and this is way back in the day, this is almost the beginning of things – I was making some early plays against Mycroft.  Still new and daft enough to feel like Mycroft was a worthy challenge.  Don’t worry, I didn’t labour long under the illusion.  But those first weeks, God, I can’t _tell_ you the work that went into that lanky bastard before I figured out he was boring.  It got bad.  It got to me in the office and not really able to remember the last time I’d left it.  So that’s where I was that night.  And a now-absent friend was gently walking the line between coaxing me away from the desk and dragging me away by the throat.

And where was Moran?

In the living room.  Eating ice cream, with the cat in his lap.  Because Liverpool were playing a match, y’see?  He knew there was nothing he could do.  No plotter-and-planner him.  He neither had nor desired the brain for it.  So he stuck about, ready to be required, but he kept his mouth shut, and watched the football.

Are you starting to see?  Or if you’re not, how can I put it to you?  What’s the biggest problem you could possibly have with me telling you that Moran is a centred, laid-back soul and easy to fathom?

It could be…?  Nah, that’s stupid.  You… You’re not thinking of all the _murders,_ are you?  I had thought my dear and constant readers would probably be a bit smarter than that.  The murders?  The murders, seriously, that’s what you’re hung up on.  Jesus, I thought we’d be past this.  

But alright.  Let’s give you the benefit of the doubt.  After all, it could just be that I’m used to him.  I’ll explain it, and then you can be used to him too.  

Moran is a killer.  He was a killer when I knew him before.  He’s a killer now.  He’s a killer sleeping next to his husband.  He’s a killer when he wakes up because Peter’s shaking him to ask if Tilly went home.  He’s a killer when he takes the boy back to bed and settles him with soft whispers that give no hint of his oncoming hangover.  He is a killer from the deepest places within him.  He’s a killer tomorrow morning and until the end of time.  

Unlike the Angel, I did not make Moran.  Moulded him, yes, buffed out the scratches and power-hosed years of sticky queen-and-country grime off him, but I didn’t make him.  He was a killer before I got near him.  In the army, remember?  Served, saw action, got shot and everything.  Get him pissed sometime and ask about his scar.  The record is an hour and twenty minutes, but I’d bet any man’s money he can talk for longer about it.  

But he was a killer before that, you know.  

Moran’s first murder was committed at the tender age of just fifteen.  Only a year behind Yours Truly, the precocious little thing.  Family holiday to Mexico, ended up in the wrong part of town and… Well, it’s not my story to tell.  First kill’s a personal thing.  I wouldn’t take that away from him.  I know all too well what it feels like to give that up.  I’ve told you all I’m going to.  

All it really means is, it’s in him.  Always has been.  The killer born.  You can’t force that into someone.  By all means, force a person to kill.  There’s plenty have taken a run at that little gimmick.  Yer man Kramer in the States I hear did quite well at it, amongst others.  But this is different.  There’s something in-built, like you get in animals.  You can’t force it into someone.

And no matter how hard you try you’ll never force it out.  

Maybe it’s the lack of sleep, or the potent cocktail of alcohol and benzodiazepines, but I’m sat here in the dark and it’s as if a light has come on.  I know what I have to do.

He was afraid of the dark, y’know.  This is another terribly personal thing, but it’s also hilarious so I’m just going to go right on ahead here.  Moran was afraid of the dark.  He didn’t mean to tell me.  I don’t think he remembers that he did, if you get my drift.  I remember.  I asked that mutual friend about it and she was able to say it lasted at least until he was thirteen.  He couldn’t sleep alone without a light on.  Scared of the dark.

I wonder what he’s scared of now that he still can’t sleep alone.

Alone or not, I can’t sleep with the Angel droning down the hall.  It’s unsteady, but no great effort, to peel myself up and start down the hall towards her.  The wll keeps me steady, and gives up a few clear lines from her.  _How many secrets can you keep_?, is one of them.  _Crawling back to you_ is another few.  

Drowsing, head lolling, she doesn’t notice me right away.  _…Nights were mainly made for saying things that you can’t say tomor-“_

“Angel!” I snap, just to see what happens.  

She lifts her head abruptly, panics about the necklace and lowers it again.  Mutters to her chest, “I’ll be quiet, I promise, I’ll be quiet.”

“You’re never quiet.”  I sit at the end of the bed.  “Do you want me to unchain you?”  The Angel shakes her head.  “And why not?”

“Because I let you down and I know you’re still really disappointed.”

“I didn’t ask you if you _deserved_ to be unchained, though, did I?  Do you _want_ me to?”

It chokes her to admit, “Yes.”

“You’d have to promise you won’t try to leave.”

“I won’t, I won’t.  Promise.”

And do you know, I believe her.  Even after everything, I do.  I trust and believe her.  I go to her end, reach behind and fumble the clasp open.  The pendant drops an inch or so, but she catches it.  I fasten the ends again and the necklace never once leaves her neck.  The Angel sits for a moment or so, pressing her clammy palms to the raw line the chain rubbed around her neck.  Then, before I can lean away from her, flops in against with her head on my shoulder.  “There now, love.”  I let her ponytail run through my hand.  She’s always liked that.  “I’m sorry I called you a dog.”

Shaking her head again, “I asked for it.”  

“You know I never _want_ to fight with you.  You just make it very _difficult_ sometimes.”  She apologizes.  Profusely, and with lots of gratifying little promises scattered throughout, so I allow her to go on until she’s good and finished.  Then, using the grip I have on her hair, I tip back her head.  The ring around her throat is bright and vicious.  In places it’s wet, stopping just short of bloody.  She might have worn through a vein if I’d left her there.  There’s a hoarse little croak in her voice to match it.  “I should get something for that.”

“Please,” she says, and it _might_ have been ingratitude except that she looks so thoroughly pathetic when I turn, “Couldn’t you just sit for a minute?”

“I don’t know, _a chuisle_ , sounds like an awful lot of bother to get nothing out of it…”

“What do you want?”

“…Tell me something about Seb.  Something I don’t already know.  And nothing about that husband of his, if you don’t mind.”

“I told you he doesn’t like me anymore.  There’s nothing much to tell.  Last time we were properly mates was only a couple of months after you died that time.”

“And what happened?”

“Can’t tell you that.  That’s his.  That’s not the sort of story I can just go around talking about, it’s too sad and too much his and-“

“Do you want company or not?  So help me, human tongue shall not address you the rest of your miserable life if you don’t tell me, Angel, and now.”

She sits back from me, dipping back out of the half-light from the hall.  It catches the points and edges all over her bony little body.  That, and her sitting cross-legged, it’s like campfire stories.  There’s something so pleasing about that.  Comforting.  She wrings out her hands and uses them to cover her face.  Speaking out between them, she tells perhaps the sweetest fairytale I’ve ever heard. A real tale of archetypal love and loyalty and loss, transmuted to this brutal present of ours.  Such a wondrous story, I shouldn’t interfere with.  Here’s what the Angel tells me.

“He took it so hard, sir.  He didn’t cry or go to pieces or anything.  He just looked like he didn’t understand anything anymore.  You had to take him by the hand to get him to go anywhere.  Which was really awkward with… with the people you didn’t want to hear about, because they couldn’t know it was to do with _you_ after all, but anyway that’s the part you didn’t want to hear.  He was just so lost, y’know?  Nothing made any sense.  He was drinking a lot.  Daytimes, too.  It was the second time he’d crashed the motorbike before anybody could get him to stop.  After that he never really talked to me again, or at least not like friends.”  

She probably doesn’t know why I hug her, why I’m saying thank you.  She likes it and knows better than to ask, but she doesn’t understand.  

But you do, don’t you?  You do now, now that I’ve explained.

 


	11. Chapter 11

Two very long, very frustrating days go by. Hard to say if it would be better or worse without the Angel developing cabin fever in the spare room. For the most part, I'm keeping the door locked. Just until she gets used to it. I'm not sure when I'll be able to trust her to wander. But I'm letting her in and out too cook and use the bathroom and, on the second night, to watch TV with. I've had two years of mostly my own company, thanks. She sits at my feet and keeps her mouth shut, but it's just the fact of having someone there.

But it just made me think I wanted somebody there I could have a conversation with. It made me want people who would laugh themselves half to death if they found me slumped in front of _Holby City_ with a slice of toast, burnt because it took too long to get up from the sofa to go and get it. It's the ribs, don't you know, it's all the ribs. People who, if they were there, I would have had to get up and start working on something just to prove that I still do that sometimes.

But I can't work until I know who I've got to work with. Hence this. It was a quandary, and I've always found those depressing. The very idea of a situation where you're stuck until something _happens_. Just happens. On its own, without me. Can't push it, can't make it quicker… How do people live like that, just waiting?

So I took her back and locked her in again.

"Can I have my phone?" she asked me. I took it before, when she was chained. For reasons which ought to be obvious or I'd advise you to stop reading now. For reasons which should have been obvious to _her_. If I can't have her leaving obviously I can't have her making calls either. The idea of isolation is _no_ contact, isn't it? Am I missing something? "No, I promise I won't talk to anybody. But there's nothing to do and I'm not tired. I just want it for playing games."

Ah. Well, that was different. How could I refuse a request like that? She's so _easily amused_! Her little computer games would while away the hours for her, and maybe even keep her from bloody singing if she got to _really_ concentrating. Yes, she could have her phone, if that's all it was for. And it took no more than a glance to decide she wasn't planning on pulling a move. Anything said or sent, she knew I'd find out about it. That's the wonderful thing about the Angel. She disgusts me sometimes, and sometimes I have to hate her, but she can always be _trusted_.

Take the other night, for example, with Peter. She finished what we were doing before she started giving lip about it.

So yes, she could have her phone.

And I haven't worried about it, not once. Not until now. It's early, and I was bringing her coffee. I know it sounds like a nice thing to do, but she's a tea drinker. I wanted her to think I didn't even remember that from before. And _now_ you're thinking that's quite cruel, but it's for her own good. She needs to wake up to the fact that I couldn't give the tiniest shit less about her or her feelings and preferences if I tried. She used to know it. Once she gets that back she can be useful to me again.

But that's all to one side now, because even as I'm walking up to the door, reaching for the key, I hear her phone ringing.

For those who like to read too much into these things, the ringtone is bright, chipper birdsong.

From the sound of her voice, it has wakened her. I know what her voice sounds like because, unthinkable as it may seem, she's just _answered_ it. "Hello?" A pause. I stand exactly where I am. Stop reaching for the key, except I might drop it into my own coffee in an attempt to swallow it. Wondering how difficult it would be to brick up a door, if there's a Youtube video for that. What I could do is give her the bricks and mortar and make her do it herself, from inside, and- "Yeah, hold on. I'll see if he's up."

Bony thumps and clatters as she rolls out of bed, picks herself off the floor and staggers to the door. Knocking, "Sir! Sir, the Colonel's on the phone, he's asking for you. Can I come out, please?"

Poor sleepy Angel. Poor, sweet, bedheaded Angel. Let's count the things she's just told him. Firstly, that she was lying when she said she hadn't seen me. Secondly, that she's living here. Thirdly, she's locked in one room. I open the door and her eyes are still half-closed, sweetly smiling, yet to arrive at any of this. I give her the coffees so I can take the phone. Delicately have it off her while she sips from her mug. Pulls a face when she realizes it isn't tea.

The Angel is getting back under the covers, curled up against the headboard and I say, "Hello?"

"What part of 'out' was too difficult for you?"

"Morning, Moran. Fine, how are you?"

"Shut up. Just shut up. What fucking part of out, done, finished, no more, went over your head, Jim? Fucking showing up outside _my_ house? Sending the Angel to poison _my_ boy?"

"Tom's boy, technically. And it was only a bag of Haribo, fuck's sake. Calm down."

"Calm down?!" Even the Angel hears that. She flinches and I hold the phone away from my ear. "Calm down, he asked me about my old name. In front of Tom."

"Oh dear. What'd you do, how'd you get out of that one?"

He lied. He tells me he lied. He tells me with darkness and scandal and the promise of all his brutal thoughts, like that's something else he hasn't done, not once, in all this time since I left. "I _lied_ ," he growls at me, like I _forced_ him to, like I've done him some great wrong. Oh, _please_ …

"Just out of interest, why didn't you call after that? Sounds like you were dead upset. Raging, were you? Surely that would have been the time to come for me? So why didn't you? I mean, I already know, but I want you to ask yourself that question. Really ask, really have a think about it. Or do you want me to tell you? Should I tell you why you didn't use the Angel here to get in touch with me there and then?"

I could, y'know.

Moran knows that too. "No. I don't want you telling me anything except what the fuck I got in the post this morning."

"Aw, Seb. I'm so disappointed. I didn't think you could have forgotten your old ghillie suit! All those hours, days sometimes, lying in the underbrush with the rifle ready. Remember thon auld lad you did down in Somerset and that deer tried to walk across your back?"

There's an idea; he's had broken ribs before. Maybe he's got some tips for me on what way to sleep…

"What're you playing at, sending it?"

"I was clearing out, that's all. Thought you might want it. Y'know, for old times' sake. Or Halloween. It would make an excellent Black Lagoon get-up. Though you should probably bear in mind, that was just a lonely monster looking for a friend. Never actually meant to kill anybody. Unlike some."

"Yeah, well, you wasted your time. Took one look in that box and dumped it."

"Really? Because the address label was typed. And the note with my handwriting was way on down, so are you sure you didn't have a _bit_ of a look? Lift it up, shake a few fond memories out of the camouflage?"

The Angel, for any demented soul among you who might be interested, is on the floor again. This time, it looks like she's trying to drag herself, duvet and all, _under_ the bed. I snag her by the hair and pull her back out. It's a _phone call_. Even if there was something to hide from she couldn't hide from it. I sit on the edge and use the hair to drag her up next to me. The little squeal in the back of her throat carries to the other end of the line.

"What're you doing to her?"

"Nothing, she's fine. Angel, tell him."

"I'm fine, Colonel." Then, because she knows he's listening and she just loves the attention of it, "Colonel, I'm really sorry!"

For just a second, I drop the phone. Grab her hair harder and, when her mouth opens to shout, I fill it with the corner of the duvet. Pick the phone up again. "Sorry about that, Colonel. You know how carried away she gets. Anyway, it sounds like there's an awful lot on your mind. Come on over and we'll… What am I talking about? Tuesday morning, you must be behind your little desk. Alright, _afterward_ , come on over, the Angel'll cook, you and me'll talk and try not to get food poisoning. You can talk and I'll listen, I promise."

It would be nice. He'd come _in_ in a bad mood. All the opening chat would be grumpy and useless. But he'd settle in. He would, and dead quickly too. He'd settle and it would be like old time sbefore we knew it. Now, I'm not stupid. That's not happily ever after. No, at the end of things he'd get really pissed off with himself for letting it happen. Charge home and be determinedly happy with his little family for a couple of days.

And then he'd call me again.

And there's only so many times you can rinse-and-repeat that before something starts to stick. Contrary to popular belief, I'm a patient man. I can wait.

But after having a good long think about it, after giving the Angel time to get her hopes up and look up at me and the phone with glittering eyes above her gagged mouth, Moran mutters nastily. "Nah, mate. Not worth it."

He hangs up.

So do I, and turn the Angel's phone over and over in my hand. She sits next to me burning to speak. The burning is almost certainly more annoying than the question is going to be, so I reach over and drag the duvet away again. The words get mangled with her stretching the dryness out of her mouth, "What're you going to do?"

"Don't do that. Don't think if you skip to being helpful and interested I'll just forget your little outburst."

"You said I was allowed to feel whatever I wanted about the Colonel, though!"

"Did I say you could express it?"

"Oh." Dragging sleep out of her eyes, "Sorry. What did you mean about why he didn't ring you sooner? You said you already knew why."

"Because I do, is why I said that."

"So why is it?" That's something I will only explain to those who already know. I'll tell Moran because his heart's already whispering it at him. I could hear that over the phone. It killed him to call me. He knows why already so I'll tell it to him.

To the angel I say, "If you're too dense to get there yourself, I'm not helping you."

"Sorry."

"Never mind." I put the phone back in her hand. "Wait two hours, text him again about how sorry you are. And when he phones you back, lock yourself in the bathroom and whisper. Tell him you can't leave, it's not worth it, but you can help him. Give him the address, act like a scared little prisoner. You're going to pretend, _pretend_ mind, to be his ally."

She turns, just a little bit. Burning again, and this time there's nothing in her mouth to explain why she's not just saying it.

"Is there another problem? Because honestly, it's too early in the morning for another problem, love."

"It's not really _another_ one. You said I didn't have to help you with Colonel Moran anymore, though."

She's right. I did say that. Looking back, I'm fairly certain I see a version of myself who meant it too. And I'm not a monster, you know, I'm still capable of sympathy. I feel sorry for her. With a guiding hand I put her back to bed, tucking her in with the damp corner of the duvet as far from her as possible. "I know," I tell her. "I know I said that." It's strange, almost like having the cat back, but she relaxes at just the touch, just the tiniest stroke, the back of my hand against her cheek. "I know. Go back to sleep and dream how unfair it is, and maybe when you wake up you'll have come to terms with it."

"Sir?" she asks, when I'm on my way out.

"What is it?"

"It's because he's scared, isn't it? Why the Colonel hasn't called before now, I mean."

"Yeah. But not the way you mean it."


	12. Chapter 12

That night I sit up and wait for Seb to come and rescue the Angel.  

He’s always been weak for her.  I’d be trying to offer her essential deprivation training and he’d be giving her little sweets and sneaking her out for coffee.  He took her up to Scotland once, up into the mountains away from everybody, and rather than bring me back her heart in a filigree casket like any good huntsman should, he was teaching her to shoot.  That sort of thing, y’know, slight kindnesses and underminings.  

It’s not, therefore, much of a stretch to dream he might drag his petty little arse out of retirement for just one night when he believes his dear Angel is under duress.  Is it?  This all crept into my head as I stood outside that door this morning, listening to her pick up the phone.  Not her fault, of course.  We’ve all answered calls we shouldn’t have when we were peeling our heads from the pillow, haven’t we now?  Could hardly hold that against her.  But she let him believe she was captive and kept and afraid (and the one thing the Angel has never, ever been with me is _afraid_ , ladies and gentlemen… not unless she knows she’s got it coming.)

No, it’s not much of a stretch.  

It won’t have helped that, when she slipped away to the bathroom to make that secret call to him, I waited in the doorway.  Watched her do it, that urgent hush on her voice even as she sat on the edge of the bath swinging her feet.  She was nearly done when I raised my hands to show I meant no honest harm, stepped in with a thump of the door and dragged her out by the hair.  She was still squealing when I pointed at the phone in her hand and she cut it off abruptly.  So no, not much of a stretch.

I sit up by the widest of the windows and pretend to be watching something on a computer screen.  The television is off, and tipped down because it then offers a decent reflection of the street below.  If the bike pulls up (or, heavens forfend, a cab) I’ll know.  

I wonder how he’ll go about it.

I’ve had friends in past where I might have been worried right now.  I might be sitting here while my assets all over the world are frozen, one to the other, passing it on like Ice-9, isolating me alone in this flat with nothing to fall back on.  That would have been Charlie.  Penny Corcoran, Poison Penny, I’d have a gas mask on by now, because God along knows where she would have gotten something lethal in here.  Morgan would have come barrelling through the door like a well-tossed caber and kept barrelling until him and me went right out the window together.  There’s another who would have been hanging out there in the dark, working at another window, to slip in and silently draw a razor across my throat.  

But Moran’s none of these.  A blunt instrument when it comes to the kill, yes, but where he’s got a little knowledge, he knows too how to use it.  He’ll just buzz, and just ask to be let in.  He’ll try and tell me he’s changed his mind and wants to talk after all.  He’ll come in and we’ll talk.  It’ll all be very much like what I was imagining before.  Moran will try, bless him, he’ll have a damn good go, at talking me into releasing the Angel.  Just let her go, get her out of here, let her have a life.  That’s the only place where he’s quite daft.  The Angel has nothing else.  Even at that, it would still be an interesting argument to have, except that she _doesn’t want to leave_.  

But I might have to turf her out, just for appearances’ sake.  This done, Moran will turn.  He will attempt to walk away from me.  And should I attempt to keep him close, by any means, that’s when finally some harm might come to me.  

I’m ready for that.  Don’t worry about me.  

It’s just such a pity that I have to be ready for it.  It hurts a bit, having to ready for it, when the old days were so good.  We were so good.  All of it, the network, the jobs, the global reputation, but especially that which was close.  I moved people to London, y’know.  Pulled Penny out of the arse end of Limerick and Yusuf Shikra over from Pakistan.  Charlie kept straying back to America, but he always came home to me.  And Moran?  Last time round, a different flat to this but similar, Moran would have been here nine days in every ten.  Whether or not he did anything of use while he was there is another tale entirely, but he was there.  For the longest time he was just there.  It was nice to have that.  

It just used to be so good, y’know.  All I want is some little part of that to stand on.  Sherlock’s probably looking for me already.  If he remembers the Angel, he’s probably figured out she’s disappeared.  It’s too close to the wire.  I can’t afford to fight with Moran much longer.  No, if this doesn’t work tonight then…  

Then I suppose I’ll just have to let him…  

Let him _know_ that argument is no longer an option.  That’s all.  He’s not got a choice in this.  The sooner he accepts that and comes back to me, the sooner he’ll feel better.  All this stress can be over the moment he just says, right, fine, I give up, do what thou wilt.

So when the intercom rings by the door, I get up gratefully and with this assurance in my heart.  All very easy.  Get him in here, tell him in no uncertain terms he never really left and never really will.  He’ll know that.  He’ll recognize when the words are put in front of him, and the window at the end of the hall shatters, drawing my eye over my shoulder just in time to see the bullet pass not inches from them, and bury itself with electric crackle in the little screen.  The intercom, understandably, stops ringing.

After all of that, the speed of sound and the actions of shock on the human body being what they are, I hear the gunshot, and the Angel panicking, banging at the door of her room.  “I’m fine!” I shout, to shut her up.  Wish I could shout it at the rest of me too.

Jesus Christ, a shot.  A shot fired at me.  A gunshot, a bullet flying through my own home, Jesus, Christ on fire, a shot.  

I turn where I’m standing and look through the broken window.  The spiderweb of its crackle obscures things, but there’s a clear view all the way across the street, across to the roof of this next building.  It’s a little shorter than this one.  The shot (Christ, a shot, a shot at me) would have been straight and true and easy.  Either I imagine it or there is just the flash of gunmetal as a rifle is disassembled and put away.

Beyond her door the Angel is crying.  I steady myself enough to unlock the door.  It doesn’t open right away.  She’s sitting down against it, but rolls away when she feels me coming.  “There now, pet,” I tell her.  “Nothing to worry about.  He’s had his little tantrum now.”

“I just heard it and I heard the window break and I didn’t know what to do.”

“It’s alright, love.  Stop shouting.  Neighbours, remember?”

She lets me help her up.  Stands a second looking over my shoulder at the shattered intercom.  Slowly goes to it and touches the bullet through the break.  “He tried to kill you?  Really?  The Colonel did?”

No.  If Moran had tried to kill me, at least in that cowardly, long-range fashion, I’d be dead.  No, he didn’t try to kill me.  That was just a warning shot.  

Why am I not saying any of this out loud?  Why am I leaving worries and doubts in her little head?  They make her edgy and dangerous, why aren’t I explaining anything to her?

“You’re shaking,” she tells me.  

Yeah, obviously I am.  I just watched the bullet pass me, that tiny little square of airspace bordered on one sloping side by the lines of my nose, yes, I am fucking shaking, thank you Angel for that moment of staggering insight.  She’ll be telling me I’ve gone white next.

But she doesn’t.  She wraps both hands around my arm and takes me back to the living room, back to my chair.  But it’s too close to that widest of windows, so I move as soon as she lets go of me, back behind the wall where I can’t be gotten, I can’t be, where I’m safe, they can’t get me.  Then, and this is the really great thing about keeping humans instead of cats or dogs or bearded dragons, she goes away and comes back with a drink for me.  While she leaves me to level out, she gets a stapler and a couple of bin bags and covers over the broken window.  Comes back, “Do you want me to put towels up for the heat or go out and look for a board?”

“It’s late, nowhere’s open.  You can do that in the morning.  Don’t go out.”  Don’t go out anyway.  Liable he’s still hanging around somewhere.  Even if he isn’t, don’t go out.  I’m thinking all this before I realize it just isn’t me.  Trying to find my place again, I shout after her, “And don’t use good towels.  Use your duvet.”

“…Yes, sir.”

 _A warning shot_.  I wonder who he got to ring the bell for him.  Teasing me out into the hall, just to show me how easy it would be.  That bullet could have been in my head.  I could be dead on the floor and the Angel screaming her little lungs out until the police came.  The message clear and unequivocal, “Back the fuck off.”

And a message so well delivered.  

The mellow warmth of the whiskey starts to hit, and the real meaning of what actually happened here along with it.  By the time the Angel comes back, little sliver cuts all over her hands from sweeping up the glass, she finds me smiling.  “What?” she says, trying to get in on it.  Sits up on the arm of my chair to be close.  Maybe watching for hysteria, if those I used to keep around me have taught her well enough.  

“It’s perfect,” I tell her.

“What, the Colonel trying to kill you?”

Which still isn’t exactly correct, but I nod along anyway.  “Yes.  It’s perfect.  It’s so perfect, do you not see that?  This was the plan anyway, and I didn’t even have to guide him into it.  He arrived at it all by himself.  Angel, are you not seeing what this means?  Get a drink yourself, darling; this needs a toast.”  

She reaches out again, just gingerly putting her hand on my shoulder.  “I don’t understand how you getting shot at needs a toast, though.”

“And you never will until you fetch yourself a drink and I explain it to you.”  She’s still doubtful.  Thinks I’ve lost it.  But at this particular moment, that’s forgivable.  “Have a bit of faith, Angel.”  She goes and gets herself one of the lagers out of the fridge.  Those were for Moran, which just makes this all even nicer.  I raise my glass and she dutifully tips the tin against it.  “Here’s to Former Lieutenant Sebastian Moran of her Majesty’s Armed Forces, the once and future Colonel of this depleted organization.  His first reaction to a problem he can’t see a way out of always has and always will be to wave a gun at it.  Long may it last.  Here, my Angel, is a toast to the killer born.  _Sl_ _à_ _inte_.”              


	13. Chapter 13

You see, this was already my plan.  The core of it, anyway.  You remember, of course, that I arrived at a plan way back at the weekend.  The night he thought he could ignore me.  I was going to make myself unignorable.  I was going to force Moran to examine his problem-solving approach.  Once he realized that he’s still my sniper, that my name runs through him like a cheeky message in a stick of rock, the job was all but done.  And as it turns out he didn’t even need that much of a push.  

I’d say we’re nearly done now, wouldn’t you?

It’s something of a relief to know that soon, I’ll have my feet up above the ground again.  I’ll have somebody who can go and do things for me.  I can retreat.  There’ll be no more of this walking in front of cars and relying on the Angel, oh no.  That was temporary and the sooner I can put all that behind me and cease to even think about it, the better.  These dark, lonely days will be a distant memory.  

The two years which proceeded will blur when I’ve got someone I can properly talk to.  God, imagine having a decent conversation again…  Not about the work, not his thing, but just in general.  Little background things.  Somebody to mutter about why there’s never any milk for his coffee when he’s the only one who takes it.  Someone to come in laughing about a bad accident he saw on the way over, some wanker cyclist getting his leg torn off by a bus and it looked like he was doing the bloody splits.  I’m not making that up.  That’s one I remember, that’s what I’m trying to get back to.

So, with the scrap of Tom’s hand-writing I got from the hospital, and a couple of post-its and shopping lists the Angel was able to steal while she was babysitting, I’m sat at my desk.  Waiting in for the glaziers, anyway.  Can’t have that duvet flapping much longer in the hall, people will talk.  

I am having my inner Tom compose a note.  It’s a mixture of moaning and demanding all cloaked in romance, pretending to be something it’s not.  Which is about as Kingsley-Moran as it gets.  Aren’t you proud of me?

Here it is, anyway; see what you think.   _Afternoon, love.  Wanted to text, but stuck up in theatre with no phone.  Can’t stop thinking of you today.  Wanted to do something nice after work – not just the usual, take that look off your face.  Don’t worry about picking up the Little Man.  Will get Mum to take him._

I sit back from that, quite pleased with it.  You can just picture our Seb with that big smile all over his face from lunchtime onward.  Five o’clock will be a million miles away.  Like a kid on Christmas Eve.  _Home_ , he’ll be thinking, _nice bit of dinner_.  Quick snog in the kitchen and then upstairs until they’ve taken the piss out of Tom’s Mum quite enough, and it’s time to go and get Peter.

That’s where it will all fall apart a bit.  But I’m glad I’m giving him that nice, happy evening in before all that comes to pass.  He won’t be thinking of it at the time, but later, a few days from now, that’s how Moran will know that I appreciate him.  I’m being as kind as I can be, to give him this first.  

The note still needs something though.  It’s nothing to do with the handwriting.  A quick glance around my scraps of reference tells me that’s passable enough for Moran.  But my eyes light on that first little piece I gathered; the masking tape from Tom’s locker, with his name on it.  His full name.  You know, I never noticed before, but it used to just say Tom Kingsley.  ‘- Moran’ was added on later.  How sweet.  How very proud.  

That’s what the note is missing.  

Beneath the body of the deception, I have Tom sign it off with that same full name he’s so bloody hung up on.  Isn’t that romantic?  There it is, in case you’d forgotten Seb, our whole tongue-wrangling married mouthful, just to show how much I bloody well love you.  

This arsehole.  Even his fake notes make him sound like a fecking arsehole.  If we never cross paths again as long as I live, it’ll be too soon.  

That said, I’m pleased with what I’ve created, and I put it safely to one side when I hear the door opening.  “Hello?”

“Only me,” says the Angel.  She’s already been out this morning.  She’s working so hard these days, bless her.  That’ll be why she’s staring at the floor, that’s all.  She lingers outside the door only because she hopes I’ll let her go back to bed for an hour, not because she doesn’t want to see me.  “I got what you asked for.”

“Any bother?”

“It was hard getting close.  I went home first to get shoes with heels on them so he wouldn’t recognize my walk.”  And she put her hair up inside a hat while she was there, and traded her usual jeans-and-t-shirt for a summer dress.  A proper disguise, almost.  Making herself new without being too obvious. 

She did so well, and now she’s going to stand there and sulk about it.  

I put out my hand across the desk.  Now she has to come in, to give me what I sent her for.  She crosses the room and out from under her folded arms she produces Moran’s phone.  Bless the heavenly foresight that made me get her trained to pick a pocket.  I swear it wasn’t just to get her out from under my feet one week.  I swear it was nothing to do with punishing the thief I got to train her for certain transgressions that may or may not have been committed upon my person.  It was foresight, pure and simple, and here we stand to prove it.  

She places it grudgingly into my hand.  “Angel,” I tell her, in a fit of kindness I’m afraid I don’t understand enough to explain, nobody is going to get hurt.  You can hold me to that.  Well, there might be a punch thrown, but only at me, so don’t you bother your head about that?”

“What about Peter, though?”

“Will be absolutely fine, I’ll not touch a hair on his head.  You’ll be right here the entire time, won’t you?  How can you worry when you’ll be right here?”

“Promise?”

“No, I don’t make promises to you, dear.  I give you my word and you believe it.”

“Yes, sir.”  She dips her head and tries to leave the room.  I snap my fingers for her attention and stab the desk with one of them to indicate ‘stay’.  She stands there while I shake off the remnants of Tom and instead put on my best Moran impression.  

  * _If I bring in something nice will you cook?  Can’t get you out of my head and your mam said she’d take Peter ;)_




I show it to the Angel, “Sound like your Colonel, do you think?”

She nods, looking thoroughly miserable, so I send it.  If his phone’s in his locker, Tom’s not likely to get that until lunch-time.  Moran will be round in Eddie’s bar for his half-pint that gets him through the afternoon.  The Angel will be on her way from Marks and Spencer’s to leave the ‘something nice’ waiting cheerfully in the Kingsley-Moran kitchen.  And I’ll be in town.  As soon as all plans are settled with Tom, I’ll miraculously find that phone in the street outside where Moran works.  Me, being the Good Samaritan, I’ll bring it inside.  Hand it to whoever’s about, and ask if this name engraved on the back of the case means anything to them.

What a day for our Seb!  It all started out so grim, with the lost phone and all.  And now there isn’t even Peter to worry about, his phone’s back, and someone will have slipped the magic little note onto his desk.

It makes little to no sense.  If you’re the sort of person that pays attention to your life, and to the flow of life, you’d be _deeply_ suspicious of all this serendipity, of what the man who found your mobile looked like, of who brought the note.  Matter of fact, if you were a security guard you might even be tempted to roll back the camera feed and have a look.  

But he won’t.  And the sad truth is that very few people alive ever would.  Nobody’s all that interested, when things are going well.  That’s why I have to give him this bright, perfect day, do you see?  Because then Moran’s not even going to be thinking of a little black rain cloud like me.

Tom’s dear white-haired mother is the only one that could cock this up for us.  And if I’m totally honest, it’s a risk I’m happy to take.  Keeps things _fun_ , don’t you think?

 

 


	14. Chapter 14

So three o’clock comes round.  The school bell rings.  Peter comes busting out the doors and running across the playground, all the way to the gates before I realizes there’s nobody there waiting for him.  Neither of his fathers, not even his nan.  He starts to take on that peculiar isolation you see in the lost and the orphaned.  Leave them in that state too long and it sticks, you know.  I know people where it’s lasted well into adulthood.  I know people who will never recover.  But five minutes won’t do him any harm.  

The Angel and I are in a street across the intersection.  We can see the school and the school isn’t looking at us; we’re driving my old favourite, the cab.  I made Hope leave it to me in his will, y’know.  One of the conditions of his contract, I was having the cab.  I think the widow was a bit miffed.  They fetch a fair price, these things.  Mostly why I got one left to me rather than go and buy the bloody monster.  

All I mean is, no one’s paying any attention.  Nobody sees or cares when the Angel starts to get out, and I stop her.

“But he’s all on his own!” she moans.

“Let him wait.”

“What about, like, stranger-danger and stuff?”

“Sweetheart, I hate to break this to you, but _we_ are the stranger danger.”  She settles back into her seat and waits patiently. 

The rest of the crowd clears away.  Big cars and little ones and a minibus.  Bored big sisters and coiffured stay-at-home mums, a ragged unemployed dad who doesn’t know what he’s doing.  All, one by one, trickling away and leaving poor Peter all alone.  No man is an island, but a little boy can look like one, stranded on high ground and starting to panic.  A teacher spots him now and rushes up.  Stands patting his shoulder and looking side to side down the street.  Probably muttering how it’s not like his ones to be running late and they’re probably just on their way.

“Okay, _now_ ,” I tell the Angel.  “Go, run.  All worried and dead sorry, go on.”

She hops down from the cab and runs to the curb.  While she checks for traffic, Peter calls out, “Tilly!”

“Hi!  Hi, little mate, hi!”

I pull away, into view of the teacher, where Tilly can flag me down.  Sit idling by the curb while she explains to Peter and his teacher that Tom’s stuck in work and Seb couldn’t do it, so he called her.  “Do you want to come and play with me for a while?”

“ _Yeah_!”  There’s more.  It gets lost in a hug, but suffice to say he’s chuffed.  She gets the door open and swings him inside, says thanks and sorry to the teacher a few more times, and off we go.  Easy as that.  

This is the great thing about all Seb’s secrets.  Even after Tilly’s indiscretions the other night, even when the lad asked him about his old name, he couldn’t say anything.  Had to lie.  Had to pretend not to know a thing about it and everything was hunky-dory.  He couldn’t warn the kid off; ‘Oh, that girl won’t be round to mind you again, mark my words”, he couldn’t say anything like that.  It would have given it all away that he had something to hide.

And believe me, that’s enough.  The moment the darling Tom even starts to suspect that there’s something to suspect, that’s the end of it.  The lying starts there, and the lying is the beginning of the end.

So here we are, and the boy still trusts her and still associates her with marker pens and fizzy sweets.  Best of friends.

“Where do you live, Tilly?”

“You’ll see.  It’s nice, though, you’ll like it.”

“Do I still have to do my homework?”

“Maybe some of it.”

“Do you have Disney Channel?  Dad won’t get it for me.  I have to watch it at Rory’s house.”

“Um…”  She hasn’t exactly had a chance to go roving in the 600-numbers of my TV just yet.  

I fill in, “Yes.”  

Peter says, “Cool,” before he realizes who spoke.  Tilly gasps, but it’s alright.  He would have found out anyway, when I get out of the cab with them.  He clambers over to the fold-down seat, kneels up on it to me with the window back.  Says, “I know you.”

“Do you now?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, who am I then?”

“I don’t really remember but Sebasdyun knows you and you used to be on TV.”    Ah, my brief stint as a children’s entertainer.  Not what you’d call a career, exactly, and cut tragically short by that awful suicide business and the legal fallout that followed, but successful in its own way.  It’s nice, in a way, to be remembered for something productive and creative that I did.  Even if I didn’t do it for creative or productive reasons, it’s still nice.  

“Nothing gets past this one,” I call to the Angel.

“So why do you have to drive a taxi now, why aren’t you still on TV?”

“Oh, I’m not allowed anymore.”

“Why?”

“They didn’t like the stories I was telling.”

“Were they bad stories?”

“That’s one way of putting it.”

The Angel pulls him back over to the big seat, and puts his belt on to keep him there.  Changes the subject with chat about what sort of homework he has.  Honestly, you’d think I was a threat, the way she’s getting on.  

I’m not, y’know.  I, in fact, am barely even involved.  I’m driving for them.  I am offering my home as a place to store them away.  But the Angel knows she’s running things as far as Peter is concerned.  I’m staying out of it.  I put all this to her this afternoon.  Laid it out like a contract and let her sign off.  My involvement with Peter will be absolutely minimal.  She’s in charge of him.  Good at it too.  Look at her.  She’s so attentive.  All tickles and touches and stupid jokes.  

The Angel might have made a living out of stranger-danger.  Tempting the little ones off the playground like the Child Catcher.  Leaving empty sweet wrappers drifting under an empty swing.  I might have helped her, if only it were possible for her to live.  Poor little soul.  If only she’d put so much effort into protecting herself as she does into protecting Peter, who doesn’t need it, it might not have come to this.  

She should know that she meant something to me.  Quite what that is, I’m not sure.  But there _is_ something.  I have to make sure she understands that before the end.  

Anyway, I get them home, big child and small alike.  Peter, as she predicted, is overawed with the flat, and in particular with the size of it.  Also with the fact that it’s not over a record shop, so that when he’s at home all day in the summer all you can hear is stupid old-people music coming up through the floor.  The Angel produces juice and biscuits from her bag, probably the fruit of her earlier shopping trip, ushers him into the living room, and closes the door on me.

A lesser man might take offence at that.

Me, I’m busy making sure I’m ready for Sebastian’s inevitable arrival.  The first ten or fifteen minutes of this is deciding for-or-against the bulletproof vest.  But then, he’ll be coming in the front door, and if he was going to shoot he’d aim for the head anyway.  No.  They’re awful uncomfortable things to wear.  I’ll do without that.  Second consideration, then, is what I actually will put on.  It’s harder even than dressing for Sherlock was.  That was straightforward, actually – Sunday-best, shoes polished.  All the finery.  Dressing for Moran, I find everything looks either too casual, like I don’t care that he’s coming, or too _practiced_ , like I manipulated him into it or something…   Neither do I want him to forget who’s in charge, though.  It’s all very awkward.  Even good-shirt-daytime-jeans is barely doing it, but it’s as close as I’m getting.  

Still half-decided, I go down the hall.  Sickening to find myself knocking the door of my own sitting room before I go in, but I do.  They’re on the sofa, puzzling out the story of a missing dog for his reading homework.  “Angel, does this look okay?”

“You’re fine.  You maybe need another button open on your shirt, though.  And just stay barefoot.”

All of that is advice I’d like to question before I accept it, but Peter cuts in first, “Why does he call you Angel, Tilly?”

“It’s just a name,” she says.  In the same second, and louder than her, I say, “Because of her wings.”  Peter giggles until he lolls over on his side.  “What?  What’re you laughing at?  It’s because of her great big wings.”

“Please,” she mumbles, but his laughing drowns her out.  And anyway, didn’t she want Peter to be happy?  Didn’t she want him to have a good time?

“She doesn’t have any wings!” he cries, breathless.

“She _does_!  Ask her.  Go on, ask her to show you.”  He asks.  Doesn’t get an answer, though.  The Angel has wrapped her arms around herself and has her eyes shut.  It’s distressing for the poor mite, seeing her like that.  Honestly, she’s not doing very well at this congenial-kidnapping lark anymore, is she?  No, it’s up to me to cheer him up.  “Peter…  Peter, do you think we can take her?”  I cross the room, and, in whispers like this is the top-secret plan, “The wings are on her back, obviously, so if I can get her over on her belly, do you think you could look and see?”

“Don’t,” the Angel mutters.

“Excuse me?”

“I said, no.”

No she didn’t, she said ‘don’t’.  _Then_ she said ‘no’.  Both of these are words which, a long time ago, she was banned from using with me.  Long enough for her to have gotten used to the idea, certainly.  Anyway, it’s just a joke.  Me and the boy, we’re only messing about.  I shake my head at him so he’ll know this isn’t serious.  In little looks and the odd communication of his giggling, he and I count ourselves in.  And at the count of three, the Angel is jumped on both sides, me pulling her forward and Peter wriggling in behind.  She struggles a little, but only for a moment.  Then she stops, limp as a fish.  This is something which is happening to her.  Struggling won’t stop it, and so she accepts that.  

She hangs there while Peter’s chubby fingers slowly uncover the most precious gift she was ever given.  Those are her words, not mine.  Honestly, used to have to stop her wearing halter-tops all day every day and now she’s gone all shy.  

His breath catches as he starts to discover them.  The Angel’s wings aren’t the sort that will ever carry her to heaven.  They are carved into her.  Feather by feather, they are raised up in hard little scars out of her flesh, suggested and outlined with quick, clean knife-strokes.  They begin with two long bones stretching from her spine to either shoulder, and a few more that fan out on either side.  The ‘feathers’, little flutters of the razor-tip, descend from these, trailing into long curls either side of her waist.  The overall effect was given depth, in certain places, by the removal of small slivers of skin, leaving darker pink, gnarled and glossy, and these serve to make the wings look as though they might at any moment spring free of the skin.  

“ _Cool_ ,” Peter breathes out.  

“Aren’t they, though?” I say, with not a little pride.  An artist is allowed to appreciate his own work, isn’t he?

“Like _tattoos_ ,” he says.  Not quite.  Deeper than tattoos.  More painful for her to suffer.  And no laser will ever burn this all away.  But he’s a child; I’ll let it go.  “Sebasdyun’s got a tattoo.”

“I know, I’ve seen it.  Let the Angel cover up now, there’s a good lad.”

“Sorry, Angel.”  She had been leaning forward on my arm.  While he tugs her t-shirt back down, her head lifts, and she looks at me.  There’s a tremor in her.  Her eyes are wet.

And yet when he’s all done, she sits back abruptly and grabs him for a hug.  “Is that it now?” she says.  “Are you all totally done and satisfied and that’s all folks?  Because, see, I thought you and me we’re going to watch _Phineas and Ferb_ , but if you’d rather poke around me, look!  I’ve got another scar here on my elbow, and two around this finger, and I’ll show the one on my foot if you wa-“

“No, no, Phineas and Ferb!”

“Right.  Well, that’s settled then.”

And somewhere along the line, wordlessly, it was settled that I’m not involved in this picture anymore.  Sour little cow, we were only having a laugh.  When I’m done with her I will literally stitch her smile over to the other side of her face.  But fine, whatever; let her and Peter be mates.

I can make friends of my own.            

 

  


	15. Chapter 15

Moran lied. He must have caught what was going on, somewhere along the way. He's caught it early enough to lie, because he shows up without Tom in tow. I don't know, I think if I'd gone to my mother's (heavens forfend) to find my child (dear God, no) and he wasn't there, I'd be tagging along, wouldn't you?

I was prepared for it to go either way. Am I disappointed? Maybe. You have to forgive me, because I know how this is going to sound, but I think some part of me wanted Tom to watch this happen. I want him to see it all and know that there's nothing he can do. I want everything he has to crumble out of his hand and for him to realize, as he stands looking at the few rags he's left with, that none of it was ever really his. And if Tom is thinking, as I believe he will be, of the man he thinks he married, what he thought he had wasn't even real.

It's pretend. You that old line, about how many men went to bed with Gilda and woke up with Rita Hayworth? Well, anyway, don't ask how I know it, and please don't think I'm comparing Moran to a forties actress and sex symbol. But the concept is the same.

Part of me just wants to be there when Tom _wakes up_.

Then again, I've been told on the past that I crave drama. Never quite understood what was so wrong with that, but maybe I should just be grateful that Moran pulls up on his own.

In a _taxi_ , Christ's sake.

He doesn't ring the buzzer. This, at least, is a good sign. He's trying to slip in, trying to surprise me. He knows he can't, that I'm expecting him. But he doesn't want to give me the satisfaction. These are all very good signs.

There's very little time while he's on the stairs. I call the Angel to me and tell her wait for him in the hall. Peter is over her shoulder, kneeling at the coffee table. I reach across her and shut the door. Then I get out of the way.

I don't see Moran put his shoulder to the door, but I hear it. I feel it in my chest. And though I try not to think it, the thought comes unbidden, _just got the window fixed and now the bloody d-_

"Colonel," the Angel breathes. There's terror on it. I look across to the computer screen and see her standing with both hands up. Moran is glaring, eyes fixed. One arm held out in front. You can't see what he's got in his hand but I bet you can guess. It was meant for me, y'know. She gets time to say, "Please," before the back of his hand knocks her flying into the wall. Her head collides with the frame of her bedroom door, a solid thunk, and she cries out. Slides slowly to the ground.

"Tilly-Tilly-Tilly," comes the little voice, and the little footsteps of Peter blasting out of the living room. I only shut the door in case Moran came in shooting. But that, I suppose, was just my dramatic mind spicing things up again. That gun disappears faster than a drunk's first shot when he hears the boy's voice. He strains for his best smile, and tries to greet the child, but Peter's not interested. He runs straight across the hall to his best girl and gets down next to her while she's still groggy and groaning, "Tilly, what happened, are you okay?"

Big tearful eyes, all panic and distress.

"I fell over," she mumbles. "I fell, I fell over, that's all." Looking at the Colonel, she gives Peter her hand and says, "Pull!" She lets him huff and puff just enough to think he's responsible when she shoves herself up from the ground. "You didn't even," she whispers, and is slurring just a little bit, "say hello to… to Sebastian."

In an obedient sort of way, Peter flings his arms around Moran's legs, "Hello and thank you for letting me come and play with Tilly."

Maybe not the best choice of words, there. Moran pats his head, but doesn't seem able to answer. Just looks at the ever-so-popular babysitter, growling, "Angel-"

"Oh, does Sebasdyun know you have wings too?! Cool."

The Angel shakes the drift out of her eyes, "C'mon, sprog. Sebastian needs to talk to his friend, alright? You can finish that picture for me before you go." She probably doesn't really know what she's saying when she puts her hand on Moran's arm and informs him, "We did Reading and Maths, but there's another bit of homework there about family and we left that for-"

He pushes her out of the way. Content to leave the kid with her, despite the state he's put her in. He should question himself a little more. He should step away and look at himself from outside. These are not the actions of a rational, happy, family man, are they? Or have things _really_ changed since I've been gone?

Again, the Angel forgets to close the door. He does it for her. From the back of his belt, the gun reappears. I think he knows where I'm standing anyway, even if I'm out of sight. So I call to him, "Come on in."

He does it with both hands on the weapon. There is to be no fucking about here, and make no mistake. He comes creeping around the corner like he doesn't want to hear a word out of my mouth that isn't drowned out by the shot. This is just one more good sign. It means he knows what's coming. I'm going to speak truth to him and he won't be able to ignore it anymore. "Peter's right next door," I say first. "I'm not sure you left the Angel in fit shape to stop him if he decides to come in and investigate."

He's planned for that. He reaches into his back pocket and produces a silencer. Starts to spin it onto the barrel. He must have known he'd need that. Am I supposed to be intimidated? By the action, by the metal hiss? Really?

"What happened to your motorbike?"

"Is that really your last question?"

"No. Actually, it's my first, in this conversation."

"I got rid of it. Didn't need it anymore."

"And what happened to your good gun? The nice Mexican enamel one. Or don't I warrant breaking out the good gun?"

"That's gone too." Bollocks it is. I know when he's lying. He's fucking awful at it. I know when he's lying and even if I didn't I know him, and that gun wasn't going anywhere. There's a part of his soul locked up in it, with its garish, painted grip, Saint Sebastian full of arrows and bleeding everywhere. I say all of this in the present tense because there isn't a hope in hell that that gun is gone. Yet he persists. I am sat facing the window. He is coming slowly up behind me, ready to place the elongated muzzle of the gun to the back of my head. As he come he tells me, "The Thames got it. You'd been dead about… The leaves were starting to change, about three months. And I went to the grave, that I thought you were in, my best mate dead in the cold ground and all that shite, and I told you, or the idea of your corpse maybe, what I was going to do. And then I went for a long ride upriver and I got shot of the fucking thing. Pardon the choice of words."

That's worrying, because the way he tells the story, I might almost begin to believe.

The cool end of the silencer finds that soft, sweet place at the back of my neck. Where spine is disappearing into skull there's a gap direct to the brain. That's kind of him; at least he wants this to be quick for me. "Now please, before you get shoved out the door, is there anything you want to say on your way out?"

This is really good, actually. I've never been on this end of it before. I'm developing a whole new appreciation for what he does when it's up-close like this. Seb-as-executioner really is something I haven't exploited enough. He's bloody good at it. "Hold on," I tell him, "What's wrong with a simple 'fuck off'? Why does there have to be blood everywhere? You think the Angel's going to mop up? Jesus, you should _see_ her flat."

"Enough."

"I did ask you a question, though. And I've been told too many times to 'die wondering' to actually give anyone the satisfaction."

"It's the only way I'm ever getting you out of my life. You've made that abundantly clear, Jim."

"Oh?" And now, finally, I stand up. Up from under the gun, up and out in front of it, hands raised. Moran does nothing more than adjust his aim, slightly. He can shoot me in the face as easily as in the back of the head, makes no odds to him. "Oh, is _that_ what this is about? Jesus, Moran, sorry, but it won't work. And it'll _really_ fuck you up for later on, so I should probably stop you now."

"No more talk," and he readjusts his grip. He keeps doing that. This time his finger actually tightens against the trigger. But it never exactly _pulls_ , does it?

"You think me dead gets me out of your life? Explain the last two years."

"You _were_ out of my life."

"In body only. You know that. Don't make me tease it out of you. Just admit that you missed it and I won't take you through the bullet points. _Pardon the choice of words_." He missed it. He missed the planning and the kill and the danger of it, knowing it could all collapse any day and over any tiny little thing. Knowing his life could be over in the next heartbeat. He's missed being that close to the idea of life and death. But these are the bullet points I don't want to take him through. "I'm not asking you to give anything up," I tell him. Soon I won't have to ask, he'll do it willingly. But I think it might help him today to hear, "Keep Tom, keep Peter, keep Tom's ma and ex-wife and all the old aunts you can manage, keep that. But don't pretend it's all you are."

"Sit back down," he says.

So he can't shoot me in the face anymore. "You'll make yourself miserable."

"Sit down, Jim, it'll be easier for you."

"I'm alright standing. Do you want a drink or something?" He seethes and can't answer. I start to fix myself one, turning my back on him again to do it. You might say that's brave or stupid, but the living room door just opened again, little steps are leading big, staggering steps down the hall.

"We're getting ice," the Angel announces. "Peter says if I don't put ice on my head I'll have a lump, so we're just moving to the kitchen to get ice."

"Oh, and that's the other thing," I tell Moran, pointing after them, "Don't smack the Angel about, please. That's like me throwing a punch at your little water-pistol there."

I don't think he can even hear me. And he certainly didn't need me to point. He stares after them, into the empty air they occupied long after they're gone. Whatever the expression on his face, I don't recognize it. I know, however, that it is _genuine._ He murmurs, in the end, "I love that kid."

"Keep him. That's what I'm saying to you. Hold onto that _whole_ life. I'm not taking anything _away_ from you, Seb. But I've just got this awful image in my head of you running right round the world and into your own back. Admit it, admit it… You _miss_ it. I'm not asking you to give anything up, nothing at all. I'm giving you, Moran, _giving_ , that most rare of opportunities; the chance to both have your cake and also eat it, mate."

There is silence but for the distant music of chipping ice and Peter giggling. It lasts longer than did my little holiday out of living.

Moran strengthens his grip one last time. Echoes himself, "No more talk."

I get back in front of the window. It's brighter in here than it is out there, and the glass shows him his reflection. It shows him the dead glare beyond the long steel, the steady hands. If his heart would get behind it, he could do this no problem. "I didn't want to do it like this," I tell him. Maybe I mean it. "But will you just look at yourself? You're not even a very good actor. Somebody acting the part of Peter's da might have gone to the police."

"Can't do that."

"You can't, but Tom could. Or is that too much like explaining? How much of you is there that he's not in on? Metaphorically speaking; spare me any other details."

"…Piss off."

A _joke_ , ladies and gentlemen, did you hear that? Not much one, and bitter and pissed off, but a _joke_ nonetheless. "You could have gone to Holmes. Either of them. Actually, go to Mycroft; do him a good turn and _maybe_ he'll help you when the Security Services finally find out that Jonathon Darcy is alive and well and living over a vinyl shop in Dalston. Maybe. Maybe he'll take you out to be shot there and then. Depends how much of a grudge he's still holding. Actually I wouldn't rate your chances."

He could have gone to Plisson or Pelletier or the Russian or any _one_ of my sisters and got me shot without having to come near this place. He wouldn't have had to worry about me _talking_ then. I would have given him Peter back if he'd just called and asked, fuck's sake, but that didn't occur to him. No, it didn't occur to him, because he wanted me out of his life for good and proper, and there was, to his mind, only one way to do that.

To his mind. That's what I need him to see in the dark glass behind me. _His mind_. This si where his mind brings him. Every time. This is his answer. Because down in the core of him, this is what he loves. He likes to take a troublesome insect and put his boot down on it.

That's the truth.

I tell him something slightly different. "You came here because you wanted to. That's why you didn't ring sooner. I got the Angel to guess and she said it was because you were scared. Now, she meant scared of _me_. But you're the one with the firearm, Seb, we both know that's not true. You're not afraid of me. But she was nearly right, wasn't she? You were scared to call. Scared to come here. Because you knew, didn't you, that you _wanted_ to."

It's like taking his skull between both hands and twisting, halving it like a peach around the stone. He's about to shoot me just to make it stop. A decision he'll deeply regret later in life, but then again I never kept him about for his forward thinking.

But once again I find myself saved by those tiny, useful steps. Peter comes belting back to us and the gun vanishes. A bit more awkward this time with the silencer. But then again, don't they tell you love conquers all?

Not a question I've ever asked myself, but I wonder does he dress to the right or the left? Gun-wise, I mean.

"Sebasdyun," comes the cry, "Sebasdyun, Tilly fell."

"I know, little mate. In the hall. I thought you were helping her get ice."

"No, _again_!" And he tugs Moran hard by the jacket until he follows. "In the _kitchen_. She's on the floor."

I follow too. Fall into step and, above the kid's notice, "Seriously? The Angel? If you wanted somebody to knock out, you had only to ask."

"You're the one doing all the bloody asking right now." Another joke, do you notice? Not such a bitter one either. He always used to joke about swinging for me.

The Angel, well-trained, fell into the corner where the cupboards support her. She is just beginning to come round when I sit next to her and slide her head onto my knee. But the first thing her bleary eyes see is not me, or the pudgy little one nervously chewing his fingers by the door. It's Moran, and she smiles, that bright, loopy way that only the moderately-concussed can truly manage. Stretches one uncooperative hand up toward his face and says, "Heya, Colonel."

I watch the smallest of changes in him. It's that name. He really listens to it, for once. It's not just something she calls him. It's the whole conversation that led up to it. In the army he was only ever a lieutenant. But here, in this, he was a Colonel. And always will be, whether he decides to take up the mantle again or not. He might not. That's up to him. I can't make any promises about his safety and security if he doesn't, but it's still his choice.

But you see it. You see it if you're really, really looking at him. If you know him well and you believe in what he is at heart, you see it. It is as tiny as a watch cog clicking into place and it is just as important. He _hears_ her say that.

 _Colonel_.

I can't make any promises, of course. Not while he's still got that gun anyway; I'm not mad. I could be premature, or just outright wrong, but I get this feeling that something has just happened in that strange, shiny head of his.

My dear and constant readers, find yourself a drink and raise your glasses, please. A toast, if you would. To Seb Moran, and to his health. To his husband and son if you really must acknowledge them. To the gunner, the sniper, to life-and-death.

Ladies and gentlemen, I think I give you your Colonel.

* * *

[A/N - and that, ladies and gents, is as much of an end as I feel I can give this one. As ever, I'd appreciate any thoughts or feeling you may have, yay or nay. To the couple of people who wondered about Seb-based supplements or possible Angel/Dani related sequels, drop me a line here or swing by my tumblr (poisonsal) and we'll see what we come up with. I do enjoy this pack of lunatics, so it's never a chore.

Much love, as ever, and so many thanks to everybody who's been here -

Sal.]


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